Christmas in the Mitten State!

Hello family fun time! We just got back from a lovely week in Michigan with the WHOLE FAMILY all in one place...imagine that! As soon as we got into town we headed out to hang out with the family that was in town so far, watching some football at the bar.

Buffalo Wild Wings!

Bright and early the next morning we and the Phoenix cousins met up with Grandma and Grandpa at their church. I think they had a lot of fun having all of us there...we filled up two whole rows! Later that day we started the Raetz Family Christmas party at our house. With all the kids, grandkids, and great-grandkids even the ones from Phoenix that drove up for the party. There were 41 of us in all who made it. It's awesome to see how many great people came from Grandma and Grandpa, and that was even missing the ones left in Arizona!

All 41 of the Raetz Family! Just missing a few...

The Grandpas

Bradley was not amused by the great-grandkids photo

But he sure was happy in his Momma's arms!

Great-Grandkids

Grandma!

Grandma and Grandpa!

Grandpa handing out coins to the Great-Grandkids

Great night with family, long night with small children running around all over the place...there's more and more of them every time I come home! There's already one more on the way!

Monday was Christmas Eve, so the big event for the day was Uncle Rick's Christmas Eve party to hang out and catch up with more family and friends! 

The Dougherty girl cousins!

Christmas day was time for just out little family of 10 to hang out with each other. We started out with some brunch, Christmas Parades on TV, and stockings!

Stockings!

Next came presents and of course our obligatory family photos :)

Yay pretty snow!

Little Brother and Sister!

Hi mom

Picking out a present!

I thought this was a super cute candid of Jordan and Kristen ;)

 The rest of the afternoon was spent at the movies watching Les Miserables. I (as well as the rest of my family) am pretty much obsessed with this story in any form it is presented, so I was completely in awe of it the whole time. It is definitely a different experience that seeing it live on stage, but the story and music are just as powerful, and the movie could do things that you just can't do on stage. It was pretty amazing. I laughed, I cried, it was awesome. After the movies we sat down for a lovely steak dinner, yum!

The day after Christmas was time for the next Christmas party! This time with the Dougherty side of the family starting out with some rocking whirleyball!! I haven't played this game in forever, but it was so much fun, especially with such a big group of people!

After the games we headed back to our house for some traditional Christmas alaskan king crab...yummmm. Of course before the night was over we had to get a few more of those fabulous family Christmas photos ;)

The rest of the time at home was spent with family, playing games, watching movies, having fun. We also got to enjoy some pretty snow while we were there too. Luckily people in Michigan actually know how to cope with snow so it didn't strand us at the airport when we headed home! It was pretty for a few days though!