Christmas

Over Christmas we had so much going on and we were able to come out with lots of great pictures. Spite how horrible I feel and how bloated pregnant I look. We meet up with my sister who has the best camera ever, in Riverside to take some family pictures! 

 These girls love each other so much and always have so much fun together!

Despite one of my cousins passing away right before our Harp Christmas get together it was nice to see everyone. It was a tough week for everyone and a hard day to get through, but we did. This is the first year without my Aunt Jan too, which I know was weighing on everyone's mind. Gotta love my big crazy family though.

Some perks of Victor working at a fancy hotel this year were there Christmas parties they had! The first night Victor and I got dressed up and hang out at the hotel playing black jack, open bar, dance floor, nice dinner. Can't wait to take full advantage of that next year. Then on Sunday morning they had a pancake breakfast with Santa! It was pretty cool and Alana got to sit on Santa's lap and tell him everything she wanted for Christmas!

Christmas Eve morning we spent with my family. It's been several years since my sister was in town for Christmas so that was nice. Since my mom has died, they escape for every holiday they can. It was nice to spend time with everyone that morning and have breakfast. That night we went over to Victor's mom's house and had some awesome tamales and opened presents with them. I have to say, it was a great day full of family and love! 

Our house got decorated with all the trimmings, well at least the inside did. I didn't have the drive this year to do any of it, so at least some of it got done. Every one of our neighbors had lights up on the outside of their house and so Alana was really sad we didn't decorate with lights on the outside this year. But I told her next year we would. Christmas eve we left the tree lights on and it was amazing the memories it brought back for me. I was in bed looking down the hall at the shadow of the lights and it just reminded me of when I was little. I could always see the shadow of the lights in our room down the hall as we laid awake waiting to hear Santa come. Every year my sisters and I would sneak out to see what santa brought us and at a decent hour... 6am too early? We would send my little sister into my parents room to wake them and tell them what she got from Santa. Those were the days!