Dahlia is a happy girl on Christmas
Sadly, the "Arctic Blast" storm--as dubbed by Portland local TV news coverage--in late December prevented Aunt Molly from making it up to Portland from San Francisco for Dahlia's first Christmas.
Likewise, since Amy and I are now splitting the holidays between our families every other year, I wanted to make a quick post with a link to lots of pictures from the festivities for Aunt Molly (celebrating in Cupertino with the Zapala family) and the Butler family (celebrating in Louisville, Kentucky).
We drove down to Eugene from Portland on Christmas Eve without much hassle. Uncle Brennan arrived in PDX from SFO (after driving up from LA) that morning, and after all of the shenanigans feeding Dahlia, packing up her stuff, and getting the darn car out of the darn driveway, we managed to arrive at Uncle Bob and Aunt Mary Ellen McNutt's house in plenty of time to celebrate.
The McNutts have a tradition of beer and pizza on Christmas Eve, which (as far as I'm concerned) is a fantastic way to kick off the holiday. Aunt Mary Ellen's homemade pizza was delicious, and we continued to enjoy the leftovers before, during, and after Christmas.
Ryan enjoys the pizza
Natalie is gearing up for Santa
We woke up around 9 am on Christmas Day, fed Dahlia, packed her into her car seat and drove over to cousin Katie and Ryan Murphy's house for a fantastic brunch. Little cousins Molly, Natalie, and Ryan got a chance to show off their Santa gifts while we all gobbled up fresh fruit, veggie quiche, homemade blueberry muffins, bacon, and more egg souffle or quiche goodness. Yum. (Unfortunately, we forgot to take pics of the food ...)
I'm not sure that's how that toy goes ...
Uncle Bob opens his gift from the kids (a carrier for firewood)
Next, we hauled our butts back to Bob and Mary Ellen's for the full-on family gift exchange, where we were soon met by cousins Andy and Nicole from Portland, with even more cute little kids--Lily (4?) and Max (~1.5). We spent the day opening presents, searching for the pickle (found once again by Uncle Brennan), solving Christmas Day puzzles, eating appetizers, drinking wine and cocktails, settling into a fabulous Christmas dinner made by Mary Ellen (with help from many others), and then watching the kids go berserk with their toys and each other. A wonderful time was had by all.
Julie, Molly, and Ryan get psyched up to open presents
Both Molly and Lily score the entire set of Disney princess dolls
Max plays with little Ryan's deepsea diver
Natalie sits with Katie as she plays with the coolest gift of the day (aside from Brennan's collage)
Here are a sampling of pictures from our Christmas celebration, with links through to the full images on Flickr. To see a larger set of Christmas pictures, check out 40 or so in the full set.
Amy and I show off our Santa gifts
Ryan McNutt and Brennan open their Santa gifts
Brennan's awesome collage picture of the new Butler family
Four generations of Dusenberry/Taylor/Butler women
Andy and Ryan Murphy enjoy cocktail hour
Ryan reduces the sauce while Mary Ellen supervises
Brennan clears Emily's driveway as we prepare to drive to Amy's dad's house for the day after Christmas. We'll post more pictures from that celebration next ...
2 comments:
We had a fantastic Christmas with you all and loved meeting beautiful Dahlia! Miss you already! Gear up for August!
It was great, thanks for all the efforts by the McNutt/Murphy group!! Certainly wish Molly had been able to be there and I know she does, too!! Look forward to the summer river trip--hopefully no one will be snowed out! Thanks again, Emily
Post a Comment