Christmas 2010

This day, that has been much anticipated, was more than I could have imagined...literally!  The festivities began at Joe's mother's house on Christmas Eve along with the rest of his family and mine.  We had a few munchies and did a "dirty Santa" gift exchange.  Joe and I ended up with one of the gifts we took (popcorn and a movie) and another frame collage to hang on the wall (Joe was especially happy about that)!  Of course we had to close the night with some baby excitement when Ava did a blowout diaper while in the arms of my mom!  It went EVERYWHERE!!  So after running her hiney under the tub we decided to head home before Santa arrived!

We woke up at our normal time Christmas morning and fed the babies breakfast, got them dressed, drank coffee, etc.  Then we opened a few gifts.  Gavin and Brayden really got the hang of ripping the paper whereas Ava chose to just sit back and relax!  Why not let them do all the work!? 

Thanks Uncle Ryan for our exersaucer

Ryan (and Ava's Godfather) got her, her first set of pearls!

Playing on one of the new toys that Meme and Poppy got them!

Our stockings almost doubled this year!

Thanks Nanna and Papa for the highchairs!

Here are a few cute photos throughout the day...

Brayden lovin' on his daddy!

Not sure if he's really giving him a kiss or trying to eat him!

This was the 7th try at this picture...minus some missing clothing, it's as close as we got!

Ava loves her glow worm!

"We're on our auntie's nice list"

What I meant by "literally" in the beginning of this post was that the next day as most of the East coast experienced, we were "blessed" with a blizzard.  Because of the snow drifts due to such strong winds part of our yard was under snow while the rest didn't have any. 

When Joe opened the back door he was faced with an "imprint" of the door in snow!

This would be our fenced in back yard!

We ended up losing power that night for 3 hours.  Gavin recently got his cranial helmet so he's been sleeping in the pack 'n play in our room until he gets used to sleeping in the helmet.  So when the power went out and we didn't have the monitor to watch the other two Joe slept on the floor in the nursery.  Until Brayden woke up at 12:30 and wouldn't go back to sleep because we couldn't play their "white noise" to put him back to sleep.  So Joe took him downstairs and put him in the swing but felt bad leaving Ava by herself so brought her down as well.  She decided that she wanted to have a conversation at 1:00 in the morning and wouldn't keep a blanket on (no heat) so Joe put her on the couch with him and used his body heat to keep her warm.  I came down around 2am to find this visualization downstairs when the power came back on! 

It didn't end there though! The next afternoon at 1:00 pm it went out again! By 4 pm there was no idea as to when it would come back on so we packed the babies up and head to the in laws house!  Debbie and Tom were kind enough to give us their room so we put Gavin in between us with a pillow under his feet and Ava below the pillow (so he wouldn't kick her in the head).  Brayden slept in the pack 'n play since he's such a light sleeper (of course our other 2 pack 'n plays are in Virginia Beach because the wind was too strong going across the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel the last time we came back from there and they wouldn't let us bring our trailer with the single stroller and pack 'n plays)!  And of course the dogs slept on their bed in the corner of the room. 

So that was our holiday in a "nut shell"! Like I always say "never a dull moment in the Luchetta household"!  It was more than we could have ever imagined it would be and we are so very blessed to have our 3 beautiful new additions to share it with along with the support and love from our families! Thank you everyone for all the gifts and memories!