Our First Christmas

OUr apartmentCioffi house

OUr first Christmas was quite buzy. We started it when we got back from our cruise and went to pick out our tree. That was an adventure in itself the tree ended up wrapped in blankets in the back seat of the car. It then took a journey to my parents house where it was cleaned, cut and soaked over night. Finally the next day it was delivered to our house. We decorated it with borrowed ornaments from my mom and then enjoyed its lights each night... that is until it died the week before Christmas which was sad. It ended its journey being thrown off our 3rd story balcony.

On Christmas Eve we headed to Grammy and Papa Cioffis house. We did not have the traditional menu this year :( but we did have papas homemade bread and lazagna. Of course Grammy had a veggie one for us and then since I added the most annoyingly picky eater to the family Grammy had to save meat from the lazagna and make jeremy a hamburger... uh, so embarrassing but Grammy loves him. Then we ate and opened presents. No cotton ball game this year and suprisingly we didnt take family pictures :( Grammy gave us a collection of gifts... plate and mug for Santa's cookies and milk, cute Christmas towels, a singing snoopy, ornaments. The after spending time with the Cioffi clan we headed back to our apartment where we read the Christmas story infront of the nativity from Ecuador.

Christmas morning we woke up and opened our few presents. Since we spent all our Christmas money on our new camera e decided to just buy a few small presents. We decided that each year we would only give 3 presents to each other and eventually our kids. We don't want to take away from the true meaning of Christmas. So in the morning we opened our few presents... sweats, pj bottoms, a wok, a sweatshirt, kitchen utensils. Then we headed to the Cioffi house. My mom had pulled a small fake tree from the shed and put all my homemade ornaments on it too funny it is better than our palm tree 2 years ago lol. So we went there and began to open presents until I discovered a bow had money on the bottom of it and then the game began. There were bows all around the house with money on them and we ran around collecting them like crazy people. Kayla and I went nuts Ben kinda got into it and Jeremy just stood there walking around confused... he collected a grand total of$5... it is a good thing my shirt was overflowing with bows lol. Then we opended gifts ( and got lots of gadgets for our camera!) and then ate the biggest homemade cinnamon rolls I have ever seen. Followed by eggs and bacon. Kayla nd Ben left to go out to Long Beach and we watched Up with my parents.

THen Jeremy really wanted to go to Acton so we ran home got ready, got rid of our dead tree and headed to Acton. Jeremy was excited to play with their new Beatles Rockband. Then we got our Tripod and battery from his parents and put them to work. We took pictures on our new amazing tripod. Then we headed to the train tracks in acton to try out a few more pics with his sisters Kami and Kaitlin and then headed to Gma Moores House for Christmas Dinner. I got to try Gma Packers famour orange rolls which were amazingly delicious!!! Gma Moore got me a really cute zebra umbrella and Gma Packer made us a beautiful ornament which she hand painted.