Christmas Celebrations - Part 8: Christmas with my Family Again

Except for a small delay, our flights home from OK were uneventful.  After all the drama we've had in the past, we could not be more thankful for no drama this time.  We sat beside delightful people on the plane, hailed our shuttle bus rather quickly, arrived at our car to discover that we were missing my largest and my crucial piece of luggage, found it on a different shuttle bus, and got home around midnight.  I unpacked and got to bed my 3:00 am.  When we awoke, we all climbed back into the car, headed to the doctor's office for a quick adjustment, and then set out for another road trip to my parents' house.  Usually we do our nuclear family's Christmas celebration and the extended family Christmas dinner and gift exchange all during the same trip.  Mom wanted to be first, but the extended family couldn't come that day, so we came back again after our big trip to OK to celebrate with my extended family.

Our family tradition is to have breakfast for dinner.  I prefer a Paleo, gluten-free diet, but there sure were a lot of simple carbs on the table that were entirely too delicious to resist.  It's Christmas, so we went ahead and enjoyed the casseroles, sausage balls, cinnamon cakes, apple dumplings, pumpkin breads pies, and fruit salad. 

My aunt always buys each of the kids new pajamas and a classic book for Christmas.  Half of the kids were already in their PJs by the time I could gather them all together for pictures with Nana and Pops.

In addition to gift cards, my other aunt and uncle gave the kids in each family a surprise gift to enjoy as a family.  My brother's kids received the largest and most sophisticated remote controlled stunt helicopter I have seen.  We have already been through two different helicopters since the kids enjoy crashing flying them so much they eventually die.  We all enjoyed watching it fly and crash about the living room.

My brother's kids have lots of pets including a dog, but our kids don't have a pet because we were waiting until we no longer had a house on the MLS to adopt a pet.  So, my aunt and uncle gave our kids a robotic puppy named Lucky.  We've had robotic pets before, but this dog beats them all because he performs so many hilarious tricks.  Lucky has kept the kids entertained for many hours.  The kids wanted to change the dog's name to Noah.  Thankfully, Lucky was smart enough to learn how to respond to the new name and now performs all the same tricks even if they call him Noah.

Lucky