christmas afternoon

Yesterday I promised that I would post some photos from my parent's house on Christmas Day, so here they are! It's hard getting pictures there, their living room is plenty big enough, but there are just so darned many of us in it, you wind up getting bits and pieces of everyone in each picture. I picked a few of the least cluttered shots to share. Here is Zoo Boy opening a gift early on in the afternoon, one of vast multitudes of never-ending gifts that takes hours and hours to open.

About half-way through the gift-giving, J and Zoo Boy check out one of their gifts, a 3-pack of Pokemon DVDs, adding yet more Poke-gifts to our Poke-mas celebration.






Just a shot to give you some idea of the density of people we're talking about. (Faces obscured to protect the innocent.) It's not that it's a huge family -- really, there are only 14 of us there, that's nothing compared to some families! But for some reason, in the amount of space we're talking about, with a tree taking up about a quarter of the floor space and an enormous pile of presents taking up about half of what's left, then you spread out all the wrapping paper on the floor from that number of gifts....well, it's crowded. And loud. And crazy. And, well, Christmas! My family wouldn't have it any other way.

The boys play with some of their gifts.










Back at home, Linus lies amongst the Poke-mess.

Christmas is over, have no fear.
Let's all up and give a cheer!
Hip hip hooray,
Survived the day!
Now we can rest until next year.