Griffin Chronicles - Life and times of the Griffin family

It all started with a bang on Saturday, December 20th. We woke up late, packed the car, left the house off schedule, then took a wrong turn amounting to an hour-long detour...finally we arrived in Waco for dinner with Jan's side of the family. Afterwards we went to the Carpenters' house for the gift exchange. We spent that night at Kate & Ryan's house. The next day we drove down to Liberty Hill where we celebrated Matt's 27th birthday on Monday. He had birthday waffles, and had to hold the "blowing" pose extra long since Jan's camera was slow. After breakfast we opened our gifts.
Monday evening we headed to Abilene to spend the next few days. I took Dad and Matt out for a 7 mile run on Christmas Eve. We all made it! Then, to ensure we had enough exercise, Dad took us all (my siblings and cousins) to play "wallyball"- basically volleyball inside a racquetball court- at the Air Force base. That night we had our traditional Christmas Eve sweets & snacks feast and a nice Advent service.
Christmas Morning we broke with tradition by sleeping in until 7:30. Then we opened gifts (thanks again everyone!), ate a late breakfast, and the women commenced cooking for the Christmas dinner.
We had a great time, and despite Morgan's brief illness, the trip went well. We were, however, very happy to be back in our own beds on Friday night!