{"id":4906,"date":"2009-12-22T07:00:33","date_gmt":"2009-12-22T13:00:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/?p=4906"},"modified":"2009-12-21T15:11:14","modified_gmt":"2009-12-21T21:11:14","slug":"the-christmas-fun-begins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/the-christmas-fun-begins\/","title":{"rendered":"The Christmas fun begins"},"content":{"rendered":"

This weekend we got a head start on our Christmas festivities (besides the 3 or 4 office parties\/lunches I’ve already been to) with two family parties.<\/p>\n

Saturday night was the annual Turner-Medlin Christmas party – which I think has now become the Turner-Medlin-Blundell-Lattanzi party.<\/p>\n

This was my third year to take part in the annual party and its always one of the highlights of the season.<\/p>\n

Along with the Christmas festivities, we also use the occasion to celebrate our nephew Jake’s birthday – which is Dec. 21.<\/p>\n

\"Jake<\/a>
\n
\nAnd because he’s my nephew and because I can – I had some fun with Jake’s picture…<\/p>\n

\"Jake<\/a> <\/p>\n

Obviously he wanted to blow the candles out again.<\/p>\n

Christmas PJ’s for the kids…<\/p>\n

\"Jake,<\/a> <\/p>\n

And if you saw the original straight out of the camera pictures, you’d see that Brooklyn and Aubrey share more than just matching PJ’s, they also had matching bright red eyes! Thank goodness for Photoshop!<\/p>\n

\"Brooklyn<\/a> <\/p>\n

First timer to the party – Michael gets into the spirit…<\/p>\n

\"Michael's<\/a> <\/p>\n

(above photos by Laurie<\/a>)<\/p>\n

And while all the gift exchange was a lot of fun – my favorite gift so far this year were the sweet bags from Bob and Vicki.<\/p>\n

His and hers diaper bags. Yes – it’s getting close! I’m wondering though if I can fit my laptop in there too….<\/p>\n

\"His<\/a> <\/p>\n

Sunday afternoon\/evening we headed to the Knotts-Blundell-Oyler-Russel-Ellcey Christmas Party in Sulphur Springs. <\/p>\n

Of course, just like the Turner-Medlin party, the kids always tend to take the spotlight at these family get-togethers. <\/p>\n

Which is fine by me.<\/p>\n

\"Ava\"<\/a> <\/p>\n

Dad showing Matthew<\/del> Matthew showing Dad a Christmas carousal..
\n\"Dad<\/a> <\/p>\n

And of course there was great food – including some awesome BBQ.<\/p>\n

\"Food\"<\/a> <\/p>\n

More food…<\/p>\n

\"Food\"<\/a> <\/p>\n

Which all had to wait for the annual gift exchange…<\/p>\n

\"Gifts\"<\/a> <\/p>\n

Bryan opening the first gift of the day…<\/p>\n

\"Bryan\"<\/a> <\/p>\n

Dad trying to decide if he wanted to steal it later on…<\/p>\n

\"Dad\"<\/a> <\/p>\n

And then there was this crazy Treeface (Heather Treadaway would be proud)…<\/p>\n

\"Kara<\/a> <\/p>\n

And someone brought some snowman poop…<\/p>\n

\"Snowman<\/a> <\/p>\n

Anyone want to guess what was in there?!<\/p>\n

So after the gift exchange and two full plates of meat and fixings, I decided I needed to go for a walk on the Back 40 (or make that the Front 40).<\/p>\n

Laurie and I went out to see the horses just as the sun was setting in the west.<\/p>\n

\"Sunset<\/a> <\/p>\n

This horse thought it would be great fun to sniff me up and down – which of course led to Presley sniffing me like crazy when we returned home…<\/p>\n

\"Jonathan<\/a>
\n(photo by Laurie<\/a>)<\/p>\n

Laurie gets in on the action…<\/p>\n

\"Laurie<\/a> <\/p>\n

And even Tim and Kara joined us for a bit…<\/p>\n

\"Tim,<\/a>
\n(photo by Laurie<\/a>)<\/p>\n

Finally the hightlight of the evening (at least for me) was watching Matthew play with his new toy train…<\/p>\n

\"Matthew<\/a> <\/p>\n

\"New<\/a> <\/p>\n

Yeah, I’m just a really big 6’5″ kid…<\/p>\n

\"New<\/a> <\/p>\n

\"Matthew<\/a> <\/p>\n

So there you have it – Christmas parties – Round 1. I’m so lucky to have such a great family. Can’t wait to continue the celebration later this week.<\/p>\n

\"Family\"<\/a> <\/p>\n

What about you? What are you doing to celebrate the holidays this year?<\/p>\n

Show me some of your favorite pictures. Share a link to your favorite holiday picture(s) (from this year or years past) in the comments below.<\/strong><\/p>\n

See more photos on Flickr.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This weekend we got a head start on our Christmas festivities (besides the 3 or 4 office parties\/lunches I’ve already been to) with two family parties. Saturday night was the annual Turner-Medlin Christmas party – which I think has now become the Turner-Medlin-Blundell-Lattanzi party. This was my third year to take part in the annual … Continue reading The Christmas fun begins<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":84,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[10],"tags":[213,484,4657,2831,2830,2832,535,214],"class_list":["post-4906","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mi-familia","tag-blundell","tag-christmas","tag-family","tag-knotts","tag-medlin","tag-oyler","tag-parties","tag-turner"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pEnSo-1h8","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4906","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/84"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4906"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4906\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4906"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4906"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4906"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}