More Christmas Celebrations!

We celebrated Christmas with my husband's family last week end.  He has a large family and not everyone lives locally, so it is pretty special that we are all able to gather and celebrate Christmas together!  As the nieces and nephews grow older, there seems to be less toys and more "grown up" gifts being exchanged.  I can remember when we were first married and the nieces/nephews were young... it looked like a toy store when they were done opening their goodies.  I think my husband had just as much fun playing with all the new toys as the kids!

What I look forward to the most is the FOOD... especially my mother in law's beef and noodles.  Oh, they have the traditional ham and plenty of side dishes, but all I really want is a big plate of beef and noodles.  Yum!  Yes, I know, I could make them myself (insert laughing from all my family and friends here... cooking is not on my list of fun things to do!) but it is a special treat for me every Christmas.

Of course, I am not the only one with a camera at this event.  There were plenty of point and shoot cameras popping off and one other Nikon D40 (my sister in law has the same camera as mine - she has good taste in cameras too :-).  The kids (and adults too) know the drill... open gift, hold up item, smile for picture.  I think it would actually be more funny to see a video of this little event.  I was looking through some of my childhood Christmas photos and there are plenty of photos showing myself and my siblings holding up a special Christmas gift.  It's fun to see (and remember) those special gifts from long ago.  I'm sure our nieces and nephews will enjoy seeing the same kinds of photos when they are grown up.

One of our nieces is a 7th grader.  She received some nifty new clothes... and of course, we wanted her to model them (she has been modeling her new duds on Christmas since she was old enough to dress herself!).  We all love to "oooo" and "ahhh" over how cute she looks!  This year I asked her to do a little photo shoot outside and she agreed!  It was breathtakingly beautiful with the snow gently falling and leaving a white blanket over everything.  She was a natural and I got some amazing shots.  I've included a few of the pictures below.  I thinks she is beautiful... and she also happens to be an incredibly kind and generous young person as well!

We'll be celebrating Christmas this week end with my family, so there will be more photos next week!  Thanks for visiting my blog... Merry Christmas!