Feliz Cumpleanos Jesus!

Well, now that the commotion and chaos has died down in the Dennis household, I thought I might sit down and write about it before we go to our second Christmas with the Gutshall side of the family!  That is one nice thing about  married life is that you get multiple Christmas celebrations!  I have been observing the differences between my family and the Gutshall family.  Growing up at my house, everyone was always loud and there was always something going on.  My family is the type that will have the TV blaring while we all sit and have a conversation, not watching the TV but trying to speak over it.  The noisiness intensified when we got my little brothers Asher and Clay (ages 6 & 5), who use their outside voices wherever they are.  Caleb's family is the type that is always quiet, one person speaking at a time, and they might sit down and play a quiet board game.  I appreciate both styles and it's nice to have both.  It might be a little much to always have one or the other, ha :)


So, I spent the first few days in the kitchen when we got into Joplin.  My family is also the type that goes overboard on food for holidays, especially sweets.  We had an entire table filled with sweets: oreo truffles, peanut butter bars, puppy chow, toffee, chocolate-covered peanuts, Christmas cookies, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera...  And we have no problem going through them.  However, I do have to say that we had 13 adults, 2 kids, 1 baby, 1 baby-in-the-making, and 5 dogs running around.  Meaning we had people sleeping in all rooms of the house, including the work out room.  On Christmas Eve we went to the service at my parent's church and came to a surprise visit from Santa Claus!  He has visited every year since we were tiny.  It's a tradition...

Our festive boy in his Christmas sweater:

Brody opening his stocking.  Surprisingly, he knew just what to do!

Christmas day we were up at 7 opening presents, which is not bad, because I'm sure it was much earlier when we were little.  It was most fun watching Caeden open presents.  Since we always have so many relatives here, it always takes us the entire morning to go through all the presents.  We decided we would like to go simpler next  year by limiting the number of presents.  We'll see if that happens... Nana (my mom) likes to spoil people a little much :)


Caleb has spent much of the time here working on Emerson's baby furniture.  We bought some white wood furniture (crib, dresser, changing table, glider) and have decided to distress it.  So, Caleb has devoted a lot of time to sanding the corners/edges and staining the furniture.  It looks great so far!  It ends up with a creamy color rather than stark white and will go really well with the brown and green colors we have picked out.  I cannot wait to get it all put together whenever we move into a roomier place before Emerson comes.  I am getting very antsy for him to come, especially after spending the week with my precious nephew Caeden.  It will be so fun to have a 9 month old with us next Christmas!  


Here are a few more random pics for you that I couldn't not put on the blog:

So you can see my belly:

Because footy pajamas on toddlers are wonderful:

Well, time for me to go help clean up now! I hope you all had a Merry Christmas and were blessed by the time with your families as we celebrate Christ's birth!