Christmas With The Panke's

**Warning--this post contains LOTS of pictures***

Christmas with our family starts on Christmas eve at my mom's house. We open all our presents and have Christmas dinner at her house, a new tradition we started after my father died a few years ago. At first it was weird but as the years pass we have really come to enjoy it, especially since Olivia has joined our family. This year we went with the traditional Christmas dinner then it was time for presents-YIPPEE!! Olivia was so much fun this year, she really got into opening her presents and actually cared what was inside-most of the time. Since Santa comes to our house Mom and Stacy spent the night Christmas eve so they were able to see Olivia's reaction to her new toys Christmas morning-it was priceless!! We had a great time opening presents from Santa at our house, he brought Olivia a play kitchen, an art table, and a water table for outside. She loved everything he left. I had some presents wrapped for Olivia to open too but she wanted nothing to do with them once she saw her kitchen, so I opened them and I'm a sucker for opening presents even if I already know what's in them. After we opened gifts at our house we headed down to Russ & Jen's for breakfast and more gift opening, Paul's mom and Jen's family are there too. All the kids opened more presents then took them outside to play with them. The fun didn't stop there we had one last stop to make-Paul's dad's to open more presents. Finally we were done running around and it was time for Olivia to take a nap for Mommy and Daddy to clean up the house. After nap time we headed back down to Russ and Jen's for Panke family Christmas. WHEW what a day!!

Here are the highlights in pictures...

Coming out of Olivia's room to see what Santa brought

Colby took Olivia for a ride on his new 4 wheeler Santa left him

Olivia is a late sleeper so we had to wake her up to see what Santa brought. When we woke her up she was her normal bright eyed self and I was so excited. I asked her if she knew who came to visit her last night and she yelled out *Santa* and jumped up and started jumping up and down. How stinkin' cute is that?!?!

This year we had a great Christmas!!! I can't wait until next year I'm sure each one will just get better and Olivia will have more fun each year.