Christmas Eve

For as many years as I can remember, my mom has always hosted a Christmas Eve party. It generally is the same; fry anything anybody wants and a bunch of snacks. Some years we have changed it up and done soup in bread bowls, etc. but majority of the family there likes what they call "fried goodness". Honestly, it's not my favorite and I either eat next to nothing or go home feeling really sick. We did the usual, fries, onion rings, mushrooms, chicken, shrimp, and pickles.

There weren't as many people as usual, so it was a lot more calm, which was very nice. My kids were absolutely dying when I brought in gifts for them to open before we went home. They asked me every five minutes if it was time to open them.  Ethan finally hit the age where gifts containing clothes are really boring. Ha ha. On Christmas Sunday he was so excited to open his gift, and so beyond disappointed that it happened to be church clothes. When we walked in with the gifts, he told me he hoped they weren't more clothes.

I didn't take a lot of photos, but my kids were so excited it was finally Christmas Eve. The spent the night running around, eating, talking, watching movies, playing with Kira, drinking IBC rootbeer out of glass bottles, tracking Santa online and begging to open their presents.

Lincoln has the cutest smile when he'll actually flash it for me. :) 

Jade spent Christmas Eve and Christmas day thinking she was a hen hatching her eggs, and she sat on every gift that was near her little body.

Ethan was disappointed that I gave him more clothes, but was excited that he got new slippers. And then even more excited when he realized I picked him Skylanders jammies. It made it not so bad.

My kids wiggle way too much for crisp clear pictures, so I have just had to learn to live with the fact that all of my pictures with them in it will be blurry until they are teenagers and have better control of holding still. Ha.

Shortly after opening jammies we headed home to get three excited munchkins in bed!

Merry Christmas Eve!

Christmas Sunday

It's so hard to get picture perfect photos of 3 young children. I always have way too high of expectations and then they never turn out like I want them to. This year, was no exception.

My poor Jade bug was so very sad and I have no idea why.

 

We decided to let her nap and then try again after church. After church, I decided to try another tactic. This time around, I gave her a candy cane to keep her occupied. She may not have been smiley and cute, but she wasn't crying!

Happy Christmas week!

Dec 19

December felt like it flew by in record speed. I don't know if I was stressed, or frazzled, frustrated or depressed or what was going on ... but I didn't do as many things as I hoped to do leading up to Christmas. I was frustrated at my children way more than I probably should have been, and I definitely need to learn to let the little things go.

Anyway, it seemed like in a blink of an eye, there were only 6 days left until Christmas!

 

It also happened to be: wash Jade's gross blankets she won't part with day. She was very upset that she put them in washer and I locked them in there and then filled them up with water!

These are a bit blurry, she wouldn't stop moving trying to get into the washer.

She promptly had a little diva meltdown and yelled, screamed and cried at the washer and tried desperately to grab at her blankets through the glass in the door. When the washer was finally finished, she grabbed them and tried to take off with the soaking wet blankets. She was even more upset with me when I took them from her again and put them in the dryer. Needless to say, she was very happy when I finally gave them back to her nice and clean.

We have had this massive pile of stuff that had nowhere to go and needed to be taken to the DI, etc. that was just piled in this spot by the stairs. I finally had a chance to sort through it all and get it 100% cleaned out. It was awesome! Once it was empty, we decided it would be the perfect little nook for Ethan's desk to get it out of the kitchen. It was always trashed and an eye sore in the kitchen, plus it made room for the table we put in there. We did lots of de-junking and DI runs, and it felt so good to fill up trashcans (we have 2 here!) two weeks in a row.

I came downstairs one day and stared at my beautiful, bushy bright green tree, and realized it wasn't very bright green anymore. It had died and I was so sad. It was a light greenish gray and I was so worried that it would look terrible for Christmas. I was so tempted just to go and get a new one, but didn't end up doing that. It didn't look as bad as I feared, but it didn't look (or smell) nearly as good as the week we decorated it. I don't know why it died, we had cut the base, made sure it had plenty of water, sang it lots of songs and whispered lots of love to it ... but it just didn't want to last as long as I wanted it too.

Later that night, Kace had a Christmas party at her house. We had started an ugly Christmas sweater party last year, and so that carried on into this year.

Kace had lots of games for the kids to play. Stacking smooshed mini marshmallow snowmen was a lot harder than you would have thought.

The boys threw marshmallows through the wreath and tried to make it in the bucket, and lots more activities.

My boys in their sweaters. Lincoln's didn't even last long enough to walk through the front door. He started pulling on it in the car. It started out as a tinsel wrapped present, but ended up as a tinsel belt

Mart's Nanan knitted this sweater for Ethan a long time ago, and I don't know if it ever even fit him. But, it fit Jade and she rocked it. :)

Ethan showing off his elk sweater.

Kace and Ryan were excited to show off their sweaters this year, since they didn't really participate last year.

Me and Mart rocking our new sweaters. Not that you can see them ... :) Mart's has a darth vader helmet on it.

Ber doesn't like the idea of dressing ugly on purpose, so she just does her own thing and dresses up cute instead.

It was pretty chilly that night and I had to coax Stella out of my spot. She was perfectly content burrowed under my blanket. At least she warmed up the spot for my cold feet!

Putting up the tree

The beginning of December we decided (or I decided) it was time to get the tree setup! We usually have a really nice fake tree, but we were worried about tiny crazy pants ripping it to shreds, so we decided to get a shorter real tree, and prop it up off the ground a little bit so she couldn't reach it as well. Off we went to pick out the perfect tree. We found an awesome shorter, chubby full tree and I loved it! Also, it pretty much smelled like heaven.

The boys were so cute and really excited to get it setup.

It was bedtime when it was finally setup and ready to go, so we just left it lovely and bare for a couple of days before we decorated it. Mart did the lights and I did all of the garland and other decorations, and then we saved all of the ornaments for the kids to put on.

All ready for ornaments, the kids were excited to get started!

When they finished, I loved out it turned out. I asked Mart if it looked like a craft store threw up all over it, and he said "A little, but it's cute!" Ha ha. Love him. A couple of days later, he told me he was looking through magazines (or something like that) and was looking at all the trees and came home and told me that ours was totally comparable to the ones in the magazine. I am glad he is starting to notice. *Wink*

Jade thought the tree was fun, but ignored it at the same time. She played with other toys instead while the boys decorated.

Once the big tree was finished, Ethan got to work on the three little trees.

A few days later, we went to my moms house and helped her get her tree all decorated and ready for Christmas. The boys had a blast helping Grandma. I asked them to stand by the tree so I could take their picture, they must have been in a weird mood that night because these were as good as I got from them: