Christmas with friends

I am feeling fully into the Christmas spirit. This past weekend I went shopping with my sister. It was good to spend some time with her. She is done with her Master's classes for now. I am hoping that I can spend some more time with her before she gets busy with another semester.

I am almost finished with my Christmas shopping now. I finally feel like I can take a breath and enjoy this wonderful time of year. On Saturday evening we had some dear friends over for dinner and swapping gifts for the kids. We all had such a blast.

This is Katie, our friends Jen and Jim's little girl. I just can't get enough of her smile.
Dylan posing with his new fire fighter extinguisher.
This will add a whole new element to bath time :)

Today I hosted a little Christmasy get together for our playgroup. This is a Upper Merion Mother's club playgroup for kids Ethan's age. We had 6 children including Dylan and Ethan. We each brought a small gift and then let the kids pick one out. It was so funny. They all just loved ripping and tearing at the wrapping paper. The kids range in age from 13 months to 17 months (Ethan is the oldest). They were sooooooo busy. I think they moved almost non stop the entire time they were here. We had a really nice time though. I have really enjoyed getting to know some the other moms in the group. We had coffee and tea for the adults and juice for the kids. One mom made some delicious little cookies and I got some bagels for everyone to munch on. I was glad that I was able to host it here. I love hosting get togethers, especially around Christmas time. Here are some pictures of the kids.
We are looking forward now to celebrating a early Christmas with my family on Saturday and then spending Christmas in Maine with Steve's family. I hope we will have some snow while we are there so that I can do some sledding with the boys and teach them how to make snow angels.