We have many family traditions especially during Christmas time. For one tradition we always go to Jeff and Katie's house and eat Vaughan Enchiladas for dinner. This year we had extra guests as the Roberts, Parkers, Jake, and Holly (Barrett's girlfriend) joined us. The grandkids spend the night at Grandma and Grandpa's house and we get to watch A Christmas Story. This year the Vaughan girls wore matching candy cane socks to dinner!
Another tradition that I enjoy is that Grandpa always reads us the Christmas story from Luke. I hear it every year, but something always seems to hit me each year. This year I really reflected on what a great man Joseph must have been. I gained a greater respect and understanding, and appreciation for his faithfulness and dedication to Mary and Baby Jesus. What an amazing man! Well before we started with the story we were trying to get everyone gathered in the living room and to get all the little kids to be quiet. All of a sudden we heard this choking noise behind us. It was Dad. He had one of Katie's decorative trees and by the position that we were at it looked like he was swallowing it (if Katie sends me the pic I will post it). He acted like those guys who swallow fire and did it with the tree. However it started showing up behind his head. Katie jokingly screamed, "It is coming out of the back of his head someone call 911!" Jordan who was sitting on the floor grabbed Parker's play phone and pretended to call 911. It was so funny. So much for there being any reverence for the story. Haha.
I went with Jake to his Mom's house and we took pictures. Below is a picture of Jake, Gus (Jake's little brother), and me.
This is Jake's youngest brother Danny.
Jake and me
Christmas Morning was full of fun memories. We had the stockings hung. They are also hung on another window shelf on the other side of the room. However this picture shows you Mom and Dad's GIANT stockings! Talk about high hopes--jk. 
Dad was a lot of fun this year. He was pretty funny. Well during this picture he had his stocking as you can see, but he yelled, "I am going in!" and pretended to dive into his stocking to get his gifts and goodies. 
Santa was pretty nice to Danika. I swear this dog is truly loved aka. very spoiled. As you can see she has a front row seat to the fire. She also received a stocking full of dog bones, you can see the little bone in front of her.
We had to get her in the Christmas spirit. Last year we tried a rudolph nose and she was not game with that at all. This year she did better with her little hats. Might I add, these are all actually Dad's hats. Every year Dad gets a new santa hat and he definitely finds the coolest ones.
While the family was over and we were opening presents, Danika started to get a little nervous so she crawled onto Mom's lap.
She received her very own GIANT candy cane rawhide bone. She was hilarious as she protected this bone. If somebody tried to get it she would pick it up to walk away with it, but due to the large size she would be lopsided and wouldn't make it very far.
She even received her very own Santa Baby, which she has taken very good care of.
Mom and Dad went to Home Depot this year to get our tree.
and like every year Mom did a beautiful job of decorating our Christmas tree.
Another tradition we have involves the ornaments. We are German and the germans have a pickle tradition. A pickle ornament is hidden in the tree and whoever finds it first gets an extra gift. We always get the pickle gift as our last gift. Jordan found it this year and Jarom opened the gift. Also Mom does her own tradition of always buying a new ornament every year. She buys seven of the ornaments and puts them on the tree. We look and find the new ornament before we open presents. Mom buys so many so that when we get married and set up our own Christmas trees we will already have ornaments for our tree. So we will have a tree full of memories from growing up. These were our ornaments this year.
Dad had this awesome Mistletoe hat so Jake and I decided it would be fun to use for pictures! Geez Jake doesn't look like a happy camper. You would think he would be more excited to get free kisses.
My mistletoe shirt
I hope you all had a Very Merry Christmas and enjoyed your holidays!!!
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