Christmas Night

We always finish up our Christmas festivities at Mimi's and Pawpaw's on Christmas night.  We head over there in the evening and have dinner and then exchange gifts with the cousins.  Mimi always makes lots of yummy appetizer foods and cakes and cookies for us.  We had a great time and it was wild as usual.  What can you expect with 6 kids ages 10 months-7 years?  It was a great way to wrap up our Christmas!

A little cousin love!

All of the cousins minus Jonathan who was sick

Noah and his garbage truck

Nathan checking out his stocking

Abby and her Barbie and the Pup DS game

The boys love checking out Mimi's Christmas train!

Christmas Morning

The kids are such little sleepers that they didn't get up super early.  Noah crawled in bed with us around 6 which is his new habit.  Nathan called for me around 8 and I went to help him down from his bunk.  He just walked into our room and asked why daddy was home today.  I had to remind him it was Christmas and ask him if he thought Santa came.  That's all it took.  He ran to Abby's room to wake her up and then woke up Noah and Daddy.  Obviously none of our kids are really morning people.  When we went down they didn't say a lot at first.  I think they were speechless.  Then as they started noticing everything they started squealing and getting more excited.  They loved everything and thanked us several times.  They really wanted to thank Santa.  I should have taken an after picture to show the destruction after all the presents and toy boxes were opened.  We also had a bike riding around in there in addition to a truck driven by wild little  boys.  It was a fun Christmas!



Santa came!!

Nathan's

Noah's

Abby's (notice all of the pink!)




Two excited boys!




Nathan quickly loaded all of his toys in the bed of the truck.





Abby on her new big girl bike


 

Daddy loves his new video game headphones.





Christmas Eve

We spent the day on Christmas  Eve baking cookies.  This was my first experience baking with all 3 kids.  They boys enjoyed it but Noah lost interest pretty quickly.  Nathan really enjoyed rolling them out.  Abby loved decorating the gingerbread men.  I let her handle those little guys!  No pictures of the baking because it was all I could do to manage N & N much less a camera. 

That evening we headed over to Nana and Papa's to exchange gifts. We had our traditional Christmas Eve dinner of pizza which we all love and then we opened presents.  We came home with a car load of goodies.  The kids were thrilled with their gifts.  When we got home we quickly dressed in our pjs and put out reindeer food and cookies for Santa.  The kids went straight to bed with no stalling.  What a surprise!

Nathan playing with Mandy and Devin



Not sure how I ended up with black and white?



Noah and Westley

A little after dinner playtime

Nathan loving on his Thomas pillow pet

Getting ready for Santa!

Fun Christmas Memories of 2011

1. This is probably one of my favorite memories of the holidays.  Noah was playing with the Tinker Toys.  He called  me in the room to show me that he built a manger for Baby Jesus.  I love that the kids are understanding the true meaning of Christmas at such a young age.



2. Our advent calendar.  This year we had a calendar for the first time.  We read a few verses of the Christmas story each day and then did a little Christmas activity.  We tried to make it "family time" activities instead of gifts.  We got behind as we got closer to Christmas but the kids seemed excited about it.

3. Gratitude- All 3 kids at one time or another over the holidays thanked us.  They thanked us for their gifts and thanked us for taking them to do fun things.  Noah wanted to call Santa to thank him for his gifts on Christmas morning.  I know we overdo it at Christmas time with the gifts but I love that they are showing appreciation.  (Yes, I am ignoring the fact that Nathan said he only wanted toys not clothes when he opened a brand new winter coat! baby steps! haha!)

4. Nights at home with nothing to do- We managed to squeeze in a few nights over the holidays with nothing planned.  We watched Christmas movies and had hot chocolate a few times. 

Noah with his yummy hot chocolate



Nathan in his comfy, cozy pjs



These 2 goofy kids pretending to sleep

5. Finding our Christmas angel!  We thought we had lost her this year.  This is the angel that my engagement ring was tied on 10 years ago.

6. Chester, our elf made a return right after Thanksgiving per the kids request to Santa.  He only stayed a night and left a letter that he still had some work to do for Santa.  He came back a few weeks before Christmas.  The kids have so much fun with Chester.  They run down every morning so excited to see where he has landed next.  One morning we found him in the chandelier.  I told them not to turn on the light because it would burn his tushie.  Later I heard the boys telling someone that we couldn't turn on the light because it would burn the toilet tissue on Chester's bottom. 

7. Christmas cards are one of my favorite parts of the holidays.  I love going to the mailbox every day to get them. 



8.  Our kids just tried DONUTS for the first time.  I am a Krispy Kreme fanatic.  (Thank goodness we don't have one close to home!)  We had a little failed Christmas activity due to bad weather last week.  So we were able to drive through a huge light display on the way home and then stop for donuts.  The kids kept saying that they thought they would rather have cookies at home.  After one bite, it was  "Mommy, I loooove donuts."

9.  A cozy decorated house for Christmas.  Even though we had all of our decorations up by December 1st we will still leave them up until New Years.  This is something I got from my mom.  After Christmas is the time when you really get to be at home and enjoy the decorations.

10.  Excited little faces ready for Santa!

Abby's Party

For Abby's Christmas party the entire first grade had a pancake breakfast in the cafeteria.  After breakfast, we all headed back to the classrooms to make gingerbread houses.  Of course Abby loved this since she has been making gingerbread houses since she was 9 months old. :)  Then we had a little book exchange. 

Pancake Breakfast



Abby and her best friends



Nathan & Noah's Christmas Party and Sing Around the Tree

I am determined to get all of our pre Christmas activities posted before Christmas.  Last week we partied until we were pooped.  We had school parties, church choir parties and ballet parties.  The boys participated in their first Sing Around the Tree at school this year.  They did a great job singing and remembering all of the little hand motions.  The last song was this cute little song about being little "angels".  At the end they all held up a fake black eye to show they were not "angels."  It was too funny because of course Noah has a huge black eye right now so he didn't need the fake one.   After the sing a long the boys' class had a party to celebrate Jesus' birthday and exchanged small gifts. 

All ready to sing...

Nathan with his black eye...



and Noah with his black eye.

 

Listening to a Christmas story



Cute party decorations



My 3 handsome guys!



Mommy and her babies



Enjoying our cupcakes!