after a nice, relaxing day at home on christmas day, we went to my aunt patty's to visit with my mom's side of the family on the 26th of december. it was great seeing everyone for the first time in over a year. aunt patty also made her patented meatball appetizers that i forgot to get a picture of, but seriously they are the best meatballs of all time.

i told sean this was going to go onto the internet, and he didn't seem to care. i guess he's still too young to be embarrassed with having the world see him making a funny face. as a matter a fact, he enjoyed himself so much he got in the next picture.

aunt patty had a neat idea on how to handle the presents since our family is so huge and it can get quite chaotic when the gift exchanging begins. when we first arrived we put our coats down in their master bedroom and there they had bags labeled with one person in the family's name. then we just took our presents that we had brought and sorted them into the bags for whomever they were for. then when it came time to open the gifts all we had to do was pass out the bags to each person and we were good to go, great idea!

clockwise from bottom-right: caran, lauren, mom (aunt barbara), uncle peter, and uncle joe.