Another fantastic Illinois Christmas is in the books. We had so much fun spending the week with a lot of our favorite people.
December 23rd:
We spent the morning at Grammy and Grammy's sleeping in, making pancakes, drinking hot chocolate and playing games. We spent the rest of the afternoon/early evening with Aunt Nicole, Uncle Randy, Emmett and Otto at Urban Air and also made a stop at our favorite Portillos.
December 24th:
We headed downtown for our annual "Christmas in the City" tradition. We stayed at the Blackstone Hotel as we usually do. The weather was nice so we spent our time walking around outside, stopping in stores, walking through Millennium park and finishing the evening at Morton's Steakhouse for dinner.
December 25th:
We spent Christmas Day with Aunt Mar and Grandma/GeeGee. The girl cousins enjoyed making the punch for the party. It was a wonderful, relaxing day. I loved getting to chat with my grandma and spend some extra time with her! The name tags were in case Grandma/GeeGee needed a little helping remember who everyone was. :)
December 26th:
We had fun at our "Cousin Christmas" with Grammy Grampy and the O'Connor fam! The kids opened gifts, played some fun games, ate lots of treats and enjoyed playing all sorts of games together. We had to pivot from our traditional Nick's Pizza dinner as apparently they are closed on Tuesdays, but Giordano's was a close second!
Between Grammy/Grampy, Grandma, Aunt Amanda/Uncle Nate, Aunt Nicole/Uncle Randy and Linda, Row finally had enough for the weights to go along with his weight rack and bench! :)
The girls were the winners of Left/Center/Right this year! :)
December 27-28:
Our final celebration was with Grandma and the Randy Baum fam. My kids absolutely adore their littlest cousins! Emmett is such a sweetheart and the kids (especially Cruz and Cora) had so much fun playing with him. Rowan was always up for some snuggles from both Emmett and Otto! We had a delicious ham dinner made by Grandma, played a fun trivia game and watched Roger do some magic.
Watching Home Alone!
Coco helped Grandma bake a birthday cake for Jesus.
I didn't get many gift pics as it was very dark but Cora cleaned up in the skincare department!
Happy Birthday Jesus and Aunt Nicole!
Roger wowed with his magic!
December 29:
It was hard to say goodbye after such a wonderful week! Row had his first exit row experience on the way home now that he is fifteen. Kind of a fun rite of passage for a traveling kid.
