Christmas #1 with the Mota Family

We were so blessed to be able to have several Christmases this year! Our first was with Stephen's family. We celebrated at Steph and Gene's house and decided that this year we wanted to try to make tamales! We spent the entire day in the kitchen! We had heard it was a process, but boy was it ever! We had a lot of fun! Lots of laughs beginning with the amount of lard needed (sometimes you just really don't want to know what all goes in your food) ;) , then the mixing the masa with our hands and then everyones various methods for spreading the masa and filling the tamales! We had a lot of fun and learned a lot along the way! It was definitely good family time! The tamales came out delicious! I think we were pretty successful (I could be a little partial). Not sure if this is a tradition we will continue or not, there seemed to be altering POVs on this. Regardless, we had fun! After all day cooking we opened gifts. We draw names on this side of the family, so it made it fun to see who everyone got. Preston of course gets spoiled at every Christmas, and he got some awesome stuff like a NEW BIKE, a snuggly Elmo, not one but TWO stuffies and some awesome super heros, just to name a few of the items. He is super blessed! After gifts we closed out the evening with karaoke, and learned that our son is a natural with the microphone (watch out world)! It was fun to see him want to be in the spotlight! We all spent the night at Steph and Gene's and woke up together to eat more left overs. All in all it was a very blessed Christmas on this side of the family! Good memories were made as always!