Christmas in Oregon Days 1,2, and 3

Okay so I feel a little silly just now getting to Christmas in my blog, but that's how it goes... so for all of you who have anxiously been awaiting more pictures of Olivia (because I don't post enough I know ;) ), here they are!

I absolutely love that Christmas this year was full of lots of cousins. I think it's great for Olivia to share the attention, and to have bigger cousins to chase around and play with. The first example of this was the morning after we got in, when Olivia and Teag immediately settled down with a HUGE bucket of legos and got to work :). The moms were hovering just a little bit, since both of these kids like to eat anything and everything, but they just played together the entire time, which was music to my heart.

We had a little announcement for our family this Christmas, and this is Olivia showing off her new shirt (which reads 'I'm going to be a Big Sister!'). #2 is due to arrive mid-August, and we will be finding out in the end of March which variety it will be!

The kids took part in an old Johnson tradition of painting cookies (okay, for O it was eating frosting, but we tried!). In the bottom of this picture you can see Kade's awesome football player.

After playing together all day, we bundled up and got ready for caroling. Grandpa Gary got a little more bundled up than we expected, but we were SO excited to have our elf helper with us! In the next picture you can see us practicing for our newest addition, chimes! Dan made these chimes for my mom for Christmas, and we had a super fun time practicing...and we improved each time we performed with them, though we set a pretty low bar the first time :).

The next morning we headed out to Grandma Bonnies to see some more cousins. Here are some of the older ones hanging out, while the little ones ran around like crazy, playing upstairs, downstairs, and everywhere in between.

Later that day Alex and Andy picked us up, and Olivia was very excited to see her daddy again. We drove up to Salem and got settled into our third room in as many days...and then got right back to playing, this time with a bucket of Grandpa's golf balls. I absolutely love the second picture, because it shows Olivia's extreme effort at throwing a ball to Grandma, while her dad does his best to cause mischeif :).

The next day (Christmas Eve), was a fun-filled day for the whole family. As you can see by the next picture, Olivia was loving all the attention, and spent the whole day going from one family member to the next, taking whoever she could to help her up and down the stairs a million times.

Here is a collage of present opening pictures, I had Alex take way too many, but that turned out to be good, because I am queen of the double chin these days! Tyler and Aiden were very patient with Olivia's less-than-fast opening skills, and we had a great time opening such fun gifts.

Auntie Ashley was a great buddy for the entire Christmas vaca, in this instance she is recovering some lost ping pong balls that O had thrown under the steps.

Ping pong is a tradition in the Casqueiro Christmas, and I didn't get any pictures of the tournament, but here's Alex practicing skills with the boys for future years. Congrats Kyle on the win!

Another picture I just love. What a great Uncle to watch out for that forehead! If Alex and I were a little better at that, O wouldn't be sporting a huge bump these days!

After a late drive back to Philomath we prepared for an early Christmas morning (made extra early by the need to have most presents open by a 9:00 church time)...more to come!