Feliz navidad!

I've never run a marathon. When I ran cross country in high school I thought I might want to try it one day, but changed my mind after trying to run 18 miles. Christmas this year was like a marathon, only you received presents at each stop instead of cups of water. And my nipples didn't bleed. Overall it was a great Christmas, but a little tiring. Here was the itinerary:

December 22 - Dinner with the Sweeney's

December 23 - Christmas with the Hartzell's

December 24 - Dinner with the Thorpe's; Christmas Eve with the extended Sweeney's; 9:00 church service; night cap with the Sweeney's

December 25 - open presents here; Christmas with the Thorpe's; Christmas with the Sweeney's; dinner with the extended Clark's

December 26 - admitted to the hospital with exhaustion

Eleanor was so good through everything. Emily and I wonder all the time how we got so lucky with a baby with such great temperament. My theory is that we are amazing parents. The only rough spot was church on Christmas Eve. We tried going to the 9:00 service. Bad idea jeans. We walked in, sat down, Ellie got fussy, I took her out to walk around, and she cried the whole service. This completely blows my amazing parents theory out of the water. Here are some pictures from the weekend.

Eleanor, Emily, and Grandpa Sweeney

Biggest baby hog of all = Grand Pa Sweeney

Me: "Emily, give me a caption idea for this picture."

Emily: "Hmm.....(minute pause). Family time (followed by hilarious laughter). You know, to go along with my bathtime. (blank stare from me). You're a dick. My bathtime prompt, you d-bag."

Emily followed this with several minutes of complaining and then left the room saying, "I don't know why I even try to talk to you in a rational way."

Eleanor and Great Grandma Sweeney. Right after this picture Ellie went to work at Montgomery Inn.

A brief holiday visit with Aunt Erin. Hopefully Erin won't teach Ellie the alphabet.

Winnie stealing a kiss from Ellie.
Trying to poop on Aunt Molly.
This is our second cousin Kendal. She really doesn't like talking to me. We spent a week with her this summer in Michigan and every time I said hi to her she would bury her face in her mom's shoulder. I even bought her flowers on her birthday and she started crying. Lesson from this story = I am great with kids.

Young Eleanor and Grandpa Thorpe.

More family time.
All dressed up for Christmas Eve.
I'm running out of caption ideas.
Eleanor is trying to talk Aunt Molly into moving back to this time zone one day.
My family has a tradition of having a beer at the bar in my parents basement after church on Christmas Eve. This year we had to come to our house so Eleanor could go to bed. My parents surprised us with an early gift: our own neon SFKA sign. We were so excited we brought the patented stupid pose out of retirement.

Winnie giving Ellie a kiss on her first Christmas morning.
Aunt Megan teaching Eleanor proper etiquette.
The current and future best chefs in the family.
Uncle Brian smells like cologne and farts.
Emily, Molly, and Grandma Thorpe

I hope everyone noticed how there aren't any pictures of Grandma Sweeney and Eleanor. This is because Grandpa Sweeney is the biggest baby hog ever. He didn't open one present on Christmas because he wanted to hold Eleanor. He had my mom or Megan open for him. It was pretty cute, but hopefully he can work on his sharing skills. We hope everyone had a great Christmas.