thursday night, after a delicious meal prepared by my mom, the adults sipped on wine and exchanged gifts.
suz, meg & dan getting ready for the gift opening.
we always take a picture with the gift giver(s), gift and recipient. we also usually start wearing our gifts as they are opened. so you will notice new outfits and accessories throughout the pictures. here are all of us with my mom – we gave her a kate spade wallet.
this year charlie drew names for who the siblings/spouses would exchange gifts with. tommy gave me a packers t-shirt and a pair of running shorts. fyi-the wine glass is bill’s – in case you thought it looked weird.
danny gave suzanne a garmin watch for running.
bill totally picked these earrings out for meg 
.
I gave dan an Aaron Rodgers jersey. nice face bill.
tommy loving his new flannel from suzanne.
my dad with his new bike sleeves and bill sporting his new hat from meg.
meg got a sweet automatic wine opener from my parents. we got a kick out of watching it work. I am wearing my new packers t-shirt, my dad is in his new baselayer shirt and meg is wearing her new rodgers jersey.
then something awesome happened. suzanne opened a gift from my parents – a wool wrap scarf that she wanted. she started showing us how it works and then realized it wasn’t as easy to put on as it looked. here is where it got stuck for a bit. we were all busting a gut.
obviously this was not exactly how she wanted it to work. we all decided her neck will definitely be warm in chicago or that she could hide a huge goiter with that thing. actually, once she figured it out it looked really cute.
we had a blast with my family and it was nice to sit back and enjoy each other without the kids for the night. but don’t worry – the next morning we were up with these two again! here is ellie practicing her “sooo big” – they sort of have it figured out, but are not very consistent.
I love when I catch these two looking the exact same way and doing the same thing. it is such a sight!
then friday night we had our butz family christmas. it was a much smaller crowd than normal, but with the amount of chaos going on you would have never known. there were 7 of the 13 great-grandchildren there and now that they are getting bigger there is a lot of toddler toy management going on.
my grandma came over before the party and we played a game of scrabble together.
sisters! love this pictures suz.
caitlyn (my cousin sara’s daughter) with ellie and claire. she was in love with them and it was precious. claire in light pink.
ella & caitlyn (both sara’s girls) helping me give the girls their bottles before bed. I love ella’s expression while she is trying to figure out what is wrong with ellie.
mary & mark with claire.
meg & tommy.
my cousin sara & me.
before the girls went to sleep we took an entire butz family picture.
my mom with katie – my cousin ben’s wife and scott – my cousin sara’s husband.
I wish this picture of claire would have turned out better, but I have to include it. claire continues to love big groups. she takes a bit to warm up, but once she is warmed up she just keeps getting hotter. ellie had gotten up from her nap early so she went to bed earlier than claire. claire, however, would have stayed up squealing, jabbering “da da da da”, and smiling until after 10 if we had let her. but at 8 pm I made bill bring her upstairs to settle her down and put her to sleep. he carried her up the stairs over his shoulders and she was grinning ear to ear on her way up. sadly, this picture doesn’t capture that.
in the sitting area near my parent’s kitchen we created the “badger box”. instead of having the 4 chairs set side by side bill made it into a box and we would set the girls in there if we needed to contain them for a bit. it wasn’t perfect, but helped a bit.
uncle danny hanging out with claire.
uncle tommy helping claire walk.
while we were in de pere both eleanore and claire were teething like crazy. claire popped through her top two lateral incisors. hopefully her middle two teeth come through soon or she is going to be sporting the vampire look for awhile. ellie’s have not popped through yet, but they are close.
what a christmas vacation! I loved being with my entire family for a couple days. and now back to reality.
