Christmas - round 4

I'd like to dedicate this blog to my Daddy, who so sweetly reminded me yesterday that I needed to update my blog (I joked with him that he needs to join Facebook so he can get more frequent updates, but alas I don't think that idea will come to pass ;o)

Yesterday, we had the Cox Family Christmas at Shari's (who is only a few weeks away from delivering baby girl Hansen...name TBD). Mr. B and Miss Monkey were at Mom and Dad's for a few days so we took up a car full (and I mean full) of their gifts and ours. It probably took us 10 or more trips to get it unloaded.

Our normal tradition is to have each person (starting with the youngest) open one gift at a time. With such a large family now, it took us about two rounds before we said everyone could open the gifts at once (it didnt' hurt that we were all pretty hungry at that point too ;o) Then it was on to the Mexican lunch buffet (which was a wonderful change of pace from the traditional ham and turkey dinners of the holidays.)

After lunch, we had an early birthday party for Miss Monkey, who will be turning 7 on Friday. She is obsessed with monkeys so we had a monkey theme party, complete with a monkey and banana cake (made by Mike and myself), palm tree pinata and a blown up monkey. She loved being lavished with so many gifts yesterday. Here are a few of my favorite pictures (well, actually, I'd love to post the Cox family photo, but Daddy is against his photo being published...oh well).