Christmas in Jacksonville

Eric and I made it down to FL late Christmas afternoon... but we still beat my sister and her family, so we were still good.

After getting all of our gifts settled, and the Pitts' finally showed up, we had a nice ham dinner and then proceeded to the 'big tree' to open gifts. I don't think we ever opened gifts on Christmas night - it was quite a different ambiance with the darkness outside and opening the gifts by tree light, essentially. As always, the gift opening flew by and we only saw half of the gifts open since there were so many being opened at once between the nine of us. But it was still fun and there were still those moments that were made into memories.

We weren't done yet, though. It got too late and some of us were too tired from traveling, so we didn't make it to the 'middle tree' and the stockings. We had to save that until the next morning. It was tough to keep the kids from it until after breakfast/brunch, but we managed. After that, we could all finally sit back and breathe a huge sigh as we took it all in. Another successful Christmas down. So much anticipation leading up to it, and no matter how much you try to make it last or spread it out, it's done, just like that. But it was another merry one.

I hope everyone out there had a Merry Christmas, as well!