Christmas 2011

Well...Christmas came ready or NOT!!! Being gone a whole week in December really threw me off this year but it all came out just fine. This is the first year in our whole marriage (13 years) that we were all by ourselves--no extended family--and you know what? It was kinda nice:) No big clean-ups for me:) However my family always knows that they are ALWAYS invited. It is just our tradition to have our Christmases in our own home for our own kids. We're always up for traveling but not at Christmas:)


We did the traditional Christmas Eve PJs that my kids look forwards to every year:


Then we headed off to our favorite Christmas lights neighborhoods. We have added Sonic drinks/slushes to our Christmas Eve night as well (for 3 years now)--every Christmas and New Year's Eve evenings are Happy Hours at Sonic:) Then headed home to watch "A Christmas Story" and get the kids to bed:) The kids all had a slumber party in the boy's room because Chris and I had things to do in the girls room:) This year we have been re-deorating the girl's bedroom which has proven to be quite tricky as I have an 11 year old who wants NOTHING pink and a 4 year old who wants EVERYTHING pink:) We compromised with purple and started with the painting and new bedding this summer. For Christmas, the girls got their furniture!!! I LOVE LOVE LOVE their new furniture (that I ordered at Cortate). We have been storing the boxes in our garage for weeks now and no one seemed to notice:) The room looks fantastic! Next up will be the wall decor:



The kids have never woken up earlier than 6-6:30ish on Christmas morning and so we had planned to not open anything until after church BUT the kids woke up at 5 A.M.!!! UGHHH!!!! Didn't they know we were up LATE putting together a bedroom?!?! So not to squash their excitement, we let them open all their presents then mom and dad went back to sleep until it was time to go to church:)

Here are they are WIDE-awake opening presents:


Ethan's favorite gift was a huge Ninjago kit:


Max loved his new "skull/death" bike:


Tatum is our resident artist and went right to work on her new easel:



Max keeps stealing our gift from Chris' boss--a Brookstone foot massager. Yes! It is THAT good and Max keeps sneaking it away for his own use:


Of course church was AMAZING today. The talks were fantastic and the music was beautiful. I really enjoyed being there for the reminder of what this whole day is all about.

Christmas afternoon was terrific. We had a wonderful turkey dinner for ourselves and spent the rest of the afternoon playing with new toys, going to the park, and taking more naps:) It was PERFECT! My kind of day:)