The Baker Family Christmas Reunion

As you all probably know, The Bakers have an annual get together around Christmas break. We have done this our whole lives, and up until a couple years ago all of us would make the trip to Black Mountain, NC where our grandparents live and would hang out on top of the mountain for days. As we are all getting older, with college, spouses, children, and working full time it was getting too hard to drive to Asheville so we have been hosting the gathering in Wake Forest between my moms house, my sister house and my aunts house. They all live within a 3 mile radius of each other. We got together from Friday the 28th till Sunday the 30th. My sister, Tara, and my cousin, Mindy, both had babies this past year (4 days apart) so our crowd grew from 22 to 25 people, with 8 dogs. We did a number of events: hiking, kickball, home-run derby, bowling, decorating gingerbread houses, playing numerous board games, games of poker, movies and more.

Here are the gingerbread houses, with awards given:

All the guys playing poker:

Some of the bowlers:

On Sunday morning (31st) we celebrated dad's birthday with a delicious breakfast with a desert of Monkey Bread. We gave him one of Nick's typical cards with hideous pictures of the kids, created in Microsoft Paint and some money towards a new leaf blower, since his broke.

Happy Birthday Daddy Baker!

Some of the gang that came over for his birthday:

Overall we had a great time with family, and enjoyed being around everyone. The twins are adorable and Kyle and I hold them as much as we can!!

Natalie loving Kyle's new skater hoodie!

Both of us with the kiddos

Here is a video of what Nathan does now with straws and water. It's dark because we were in a restaurant, but he's hilarious.

While we were at home we also got the chance to get dads help making a desk for our office. After looking for MONTHS on craigs list to see what deals we could find on executive desks, we didn't find anything. We both need desks down there, so we ended up making a partners desk that we can both use. It has the beaded board shelving on one side to match our bookcases. Here they are working on it, and I will post more as soon as it's painted!