You can tell Christmas has official begun in the Winter household when you see this taking place in the kitchen....
My poor mom is always running around with her head cut off the whole month of December. She has four kids, a son-in-law, a grand kid, a husband, extended family, friends, and teacher to buy presents for. She has my birthday December 15th to worry about, Hailey's birthday December 22nd to worry about, and a million other holiday obligations! After all of this... she is also in charge of the cooking. Starting last year my dad decided to make it tradition that the guys in the house would cook Christmas Eve dinner. They have succeded with flying colors two years in a row now.... with the meal that is. They always manage to leave the dishes afterwards which is harder then just cooking the meal ourselves after the mess they leave, but we still love them anyhow :)Derrik making homemade meatballs
The Chefs
My Mom, Yuilya, and Carrie enjoying dinner
Some good-looking couple...hehe
Daddy with his girls
My sister and I on Christmas Eve
We love our baby sister
My Parents
For Christmas this year I did some shopping on an amazing website called Etsy (it's the devil!), but has amazing gifts! My sister's gifts
I got them new covers for their Boppy pillows (they got the pillow last year). A Boppy pillow(for those of you that don't know) are meant for babies. People use them to nurse or to prop the baby. The girls kept trying to steal Ryder's when he was a baby so last year I got them their own. This year I found some cute new covers on Etsy....
We had a great Christmas Eve with our friends and family. We have never made a huge deal out of Christmas Eve, but just use it to have some quiet time and a good meal with whoever can be there. We love to have our family around and take in any friends who might be in need of some company :)Christmas morning Derrik and I knew we needed to get up early to have our own little Christmas at our apartment. We had a long day ahead of us... (early to us isn't early like other families.. we woke him up at about 7:45... my family never really starts until like 8:45-9:00... love it!)
We woke our little man up
Here is that excited "I know they woke me up for something good" look!
I keep asking Derrik what his family did on Christmas... if they had any traditions he truly remembered and wanted to keep going for Ryder to remember. I want to try to start those now that Ryder is so little. We've been trying to brainstorm things that were special to us each Christmas. I asked him about stockings and he said he remembered just opening their stockings by the Christmas tree before their gifts so I overruled him and decided to enforce our tradition :) Santa always left our stockings on our bed for us. We weren't allowed to touch them until my mom came in that morning, but in the middle of the night I could always feel it at the end of my bed and remember being SO excited that Santa came and knew there must be some amazing things waiting for us!!! Whether it was just Ryan and I, or eventually Ally and Hailey too, we always opened them together on our beds. Mom would join in on the festivities with us taking pictures while Dad showered. My dad was hard to get out of bed so the stockings would hold us over until he was showered and awake. Thank God he wasn't a coffee drinker too or we would have been in serious trouble!!! Even though Derrik is an early riser on Christmas, unlike my dad, we still did our stockings with Ryder on our bed this year. We gave Ryder his stocking and Derrik showed him to look inside. Santa left some cool toys inside and Ryder loved it!!!
Checking out a toy from his stocking
Dad trying to show Ryder there is more then one toy in there... Ryder thought this was pretty cool once he realized it!
Dad's turn!
Afterwards we went upstairs to see what Santa had left under the Christmas tree for us! A tradition I had heard about from friends was that Santa wrapped all their gifts in the same wrapping paper. I loved this, but am a huge wrapping paper freak! I could spend thirty minutes easily contemplating what wrapping paper to get in the wrapping paper section during Christmas time(if Derrik knew this he'd probably freak out). So after contemplating back and forth, I put away the nice looking paper and got Ryder what I thought he would truly like.... I went with the extrememly tacky Sesame Street wrapping paper... Yuck! BUT... The first thing Ryder did when he saw the Christmas tree was lean down and point to the figures on the wrapping paper and smiled at us... made this Mommy's morning :)
Once he got over the paper he started to take in the whole scene...
SANTA CAME!!!!
So Excited!!!
Ryder was too funny opening presents. Every little piece of paper he ripped off he wanted to give to us or throw in the trash... he takes after me :) It took a little while to open his stuff because he wanted them opened and out of the box after each one, but we loved it anyhow.
Inspecting one of his presents
After we finished our family Christmas we headed next door to my parents house. A view of Christmas at the Winter household
Since Ryder is still too little to expect his big gifts from Santa we passed the spoiling rights onto the grandparents and Uncle Ryan. Their gifts to him were the biggest hits with Ryder for the day. Ryder in the past month or so has been showing signs of becoming a basketball player much more so then following in his Daddy's footsteps of being a baseball player. He loves his toys basketball, real basketball, his Auntie Ally's big basketball hoop outside, his shower basketball hoop.... anything basketball We started to realize Ryder was deprived when he would bring everyone his little bathtub basketball hoop to hold and then would pretend to put a real basketball through it.... didn't really work! Uncle Ryan got Ryder his first real basketball hoop. Ryder played with this all morning.... all day actually!
Our Basketball Star
Grammy and Grandpa got Ryder his second favorite gift (it could be his first, but we keep taking it away so it won't ruin their wood floors!) a new set of golf clubs! We were getting Derrik some golf clothes the other day and saw a small set of clubs. Grandpa couldn't resist... and the spoiling continues!Daddy is thrilled Ryder doesn't have to smash his golf clubs at the driving range anymore!
Us :)
More gifts...(side note... the weird silver thing in my parent's living room is a box for the back of my dad's truck that was given to him by my brother... not some weird furniture that it kind of appears to be)
Ally and Cooper
Brooke and I
The Guys
My brother Ryan and I
Auntie and Uncle Sean
Hailey and Dad
Some of my cousins...
Ally got her Miles to Go book by Miley Cyrus that she has been begging for all month!
Our Family on Christmas Morning
Our First Baby
Chloe
After Christmas with my immediate family, my mom's extended family all comes over to exchange gifts (We miss you Scott, Karen, Mike, and Jeff). It's always a little hectic, but nice to see everyone. It's also the one time of year the my Great Grandma, Gigi, get's to see everyone together and we all know it's so special to her.
Gram and Papa
Ally and Cooper
Brooke and I
The GuysRyan, Cooper, Uncle Sean, Uncle Greg, and Uncle Bobby
My brother Ryan and I
Auntie and Uncle Sean
Hailey and Dad
Some of my cousins...Adam, Brooke, and Madison
Gigi passed out her gifts that she gives us every year... A can of Poppy Cock
Five Generations
The Whole Family 
We had such an amazing Christmas. I think the holiday truly changes when you can see it through your own child's eyes. I can honestly say the best present I received yesterday were watching him enjoy everything so much. I loved the look in his eyes! We can't wait to enjoy this upcoming week with family now that all the running around of Christmas is behind us, and we also can't wait to celebrate Christmas in Pennsylvania just after the New Year!
Gigi passed out her gifts that she gives us every year... A can of Poppy CockDon't know why, but it makes us laugh every year (I think it's the name and the fact that is comes from our 90 year old Grandmother)
Five GenerationsRyder's with his Mommy, Grammy, Mimi, and his great-great-grandmother Gigi
The Whole Family (minus my mom taking the picture)
We had such an amazing Christmas. I think the holiday truly changes when you can see it through your own child's eyes. I can honestly say the best present I received yesterday were watching him enjoy everything so much. I loved the look in his eyes! We can't wait to enjoy this upcoming week with family now that all the running around of Christmas is behind us, and we also can't wait to celebrate Christmas in Pennsylvania just after the New Year! 
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