Christmas #1 and #2 (and kind of #3) 2012

Merry Christmas! Hope you had a wonderful time celebrating Jesus' birth with family. And the fun part for us is that we aren't done yet (we still have christmas #3 and #4 tonight and tomorrow!). We were in Orange City, IA from Saturday-Thursday this week celebrating with Kley's family. It was great to be able to be there for longer than a weekend and to just have time to relax together. We had a great time eating, laying around, and watching movies. :)

Here are some of Jana's (my mother-in-law) beautiful decorations. 

Christmas #1- with Kley's family!

On Christmas day, the whole VerSteeg clan got together at a local restaurant to celebrate. There were about 70 people. (Brad is an only child, and Jana is one of eight siblings!) 

Yummy crock-pots full of soup!

Candy table.

Table centerpieces.

The kids gift table.

Kley and I.

All the younger kids/cousins/grandkids.

Jana and Kley's Aunt Mary are so generous and talented at wrapping/picking out beautiful gifts for people. Each Christmas the women play some sort of game and each girl ends up with this beautiful basket. Mine was this neat glass bowl filled with a scarf, nail polish, candle holder, shower gel, etc. It's always very fun!

The baskets.

Playing cards.

Sitting and eating.

The kids opening their gifts.

We also opened gifts just as a family. Kley's family is so generous! Kley got this new spectacular life-changing guitar thing (according to him.) It's called the Axe-FX II- and it's this box that can pretty much do everything in one, so you really don't need amps or pedals anymore. It does sound pretty cool, actually. He was super pumped. :)

I got some Toms shoes (my first pair), a vest, some new pots and pans, a new hair dryer and straightener, and best of all- plane tickets to visit my friend, Stephanie, who is moving to Washington DC!

Christmas #2- The Schut side

My grandparents and aunt/uncle/cousin live in Sioux Center, a neighboring town to Orange City, so we also got to see my family on Wednesday to celebrate Christmas and my grandpa's 80th birthday with them.

The crew.

 The whole family!

My dad's brother- Uncle Eric, Aunt Donna, cousin Alyssa, and her fiance that we met for the first time, Arthur. (I give him good marks- he seemed super nice!)

All the grandkids with Gram and Oppy. (We called my grandpa Oppy growing up- it's a long story, but it's a version of the Dutch word for grandpa, Oppi.)

My grandma's Christmas tree.

It was a great week! I am excited to be home again and to have more celebrations here!

(I guess you could also kind of count Kley and I's gift exchange as it's own Christmas #3. :) We opened our own gifts Saturday morning before we left for OC. I got Kley a flannel shirt, slippers, and a groupon to go skiing in January. He got me a candle, lotion, slippers, a Twins t-shirt, and yoga pants.)

Merry Christmas!