A very merry "American" Christmas ;-)

We arrived in St. Louis Christmas night.  It was a weird feeling spending a good chunk of Christmas day (about 5 hours) in an airport and on a plane. But nonetheless, it was still Christmas when we arrived at my sister's beautiful home. I know this sounds cheesy, but it was so magical driving into their neighborhood in Des Peres- it was picture perfect with snowy envoloping trees - and totally reminded me of the Home Alone neighborhood. To quote my mom, "It feels/looks so American!" hahahaha

Here is the Hostesses with the mostesses - Jessica & Scott.  Full House is an understatement: 10 adults, 6 kids (sorry, Jake, I included you on the kid list- you're not quite yet an adult.) and 2 babies. (And look how picture-esque their backyard is!)

In looking through all of my pictures from St. Louis, I realized we did a whole lot of just hanging out. Which was fine by me, since I felt overwhelmed with trying to spend time with each of my 6 siblings, 5 nieces, 1 nephew, mom and still try not to neglect Jeremy and Pearce too much. It was the first time in 2 years that we had all been together. And the first time I got to hold and see two of my nieces: Jane - 16 months; and Penelope - 4 months. Pearce LOVED every second of playing with all of the little girlie bugs.

So here is a little rundown (mostly in photos) of what went down.

My mom brought a big box of all our baby books, and tons of photo albums, and let us pick through all the albums and take any photos we wanted. I LOVED looking through all the photos of my childhood and hit the jackpot and grabbed lots of the photos before anyone else could. hahahaha. (don't worry, Jess and Sarah, I'll scan and give y'all some digital copies, I promise.)

And of course, we had to get a family photo! This was quite the challenge with such a large group and so many little kids on the verge of fits, but I think we got a couple good ones.

Mom and all SEVEN of us. 

(Jessica-30; Me-29; Sarah-27; Freddie-24; Laura-22; Amy-19; Jacob-13.8333)

Aaawww...

Mom and her grand-chirren

(Ethan-7.5; Grace- 6; Sophie-3; Eleanor- 2; Jane- 14 months; Pearce- 9 months; Penelope- 4 months)

And a quickie of us!

As a reward for the kids taking the family photo, Scott and Jeremy took them sledding nearby in the neighborhood. But no photos were taken - remember, this was a reward for already taking a million photos. :-)

We made two trips to the locally famous - TED DREWES FROZEN CUSTARD. Frozen custard is my new fave frozen treat. creamier and tastier than ice cream.

In my opinion, it's not a Christmas vacation without seeing a couple movies. So we did just that! (Thanks mom for babysitting!!) Carrying on with our new found love for Harry Potter, we saw "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows"- and just a few of us went for an early bird matinee of "True Grit". I thought both were awesome.

And like I said... lots of just hanging out. I love my family sooooooo much.

After everyone else drove home, we still had a couple days left. So we rented a car and drove half way to Louisville, Kentucky to meet up with Jeremy's brother, Brandon, and his wife Brittany. We got to drive through downtown St. Louis seeing Busch Stadium, Union Center and The Gateway Arch. And continued driving for two more hours into the middle of Southern Illinois. We found a little pizza/pasta place in Fairfield, Ill and munched on salad bar and pizza and chatted with B&B for several hours and then turned around and headed back.

Brothers

Pearce meeting Aunt Britt and Uncle Brandon for the first time.

We hung out with the Creers one more day before catching our flight home. We "foo-yayed" a bit at the nearby mall, but after an hour or so it started POURING RAIN outside and they booted us out due to multiple TORNADO watches! yikes! We were worried our flight would be messed up... but everything turned out okay with just an hour delay. 

And there ya have it. The Christmas that never ended! (I mean that in a good way, of course!)