Christmas - Stepanchick Style

On December 26th, the entire Stepanchick family came to our house for our family get together. It is nice to not rush around on Christmas day and we get to spend the entire day together, which is a real treat. Many who know us say that our family could have fun in a dark alley and its the truth. We had karaoke, games, and of course lots of presents - mostly (once again) for my boys since they are the only little ones so far. I look forward to the day when there are more!

I am very glad that everyone came to our house b/c I wouldn't have wanted to lug everything home. I'm not sure that it would have even fit in the car. Although having this the day after Christmas meant that Greg and I were up to 1:30 am getting the house ready, putting away presents so everyone would fit, and cooking. Thank God Greg is such a big help!

Jenna and Owen with Aunt Nan in the background.

Owen's godmother, Hannah. That's Gavin's helmet. Not sure if Gavin's head is big or Hannah's is small????

Gavin opening his millions of presents. Toy Story is not his only love. Gavin also loves to pretend that he is a dinosaur. Now he has a hat and slippers to add!

Playing horsey with Uncle Jim.

Playing Toy Story memory with Daddy and Jenna.

This was also a very special day b/c the Stepanchick cousins got together on November 5 and secretly got family pictures taken to surprise all our parents! It was very difficult keeping the secret for so long, but it definitely brought all the cousins closer and we managed to pull off the surprise. My cousin, Jenna, and I put together pictures in a collage frame for each family and my cousin, Danny, put together a nice DVD presentation to show them before we handed out the presents. It was very rewarding seeing our parents welling up with tears watching the DVD and enjoying their surprise gifts!

Even though we lost our grandparents, we want to keep our family strong and though we are grown up and some are moving away, we will always be family and we want to make sure that our children know what it means to have a strong extended family as well!