Christmas 2013

We had a very Merry Christmas! C slept in and we made A&E wait for us to go downstairs. Grammy and Pappy Joel are visiting so they were able to spend Christmas morning with us and see the kids open gifts. A&E are very laid back about the whole thing. You won't hear squeals of excitement or see jumping up and down. They get going more as the day goes on though! I think everything was a big success. Avery declared it the best Christmas ever!

We were sad that Bob had to leave but we know he went back to the North Pole with Santa


Santa brought gifts!

Andy went up to get C and he was more excited to see me than any of the gifts laying out. Sweet mama's boy!

Avery adores Clarice the reindeer

Stockings after breakfast

I got a sweet card the kids picked out for me

C's favorite thing was the breath mints that rattle

It is very hard to get a pic of this guy not making a goofy face

I got a soft serve ice cream maker!

We confused A&E and had them open their otterbox cases before their Kindle Fires

These kids are really into tech

The jokester got me again this year. I got a Zales bag that had breath mints in it. There were real diamond earrings hidden upstairs though!

Merry Christmas from us!

Polar Express at school

A&E's school had a Polar Express day where they wore pj's and the conductor came to get them from their classroom for a reading of the story followed by hot cocoa. It was super cute. The conductor was great! He looked like Tom Hanks from the movie. Santa even made an appearance. A told me it wasn't the real Santa though because he didn't know all the reindeer names. I agreed with her. A&E's teacher is super sweet and encourages parents to visit anytime. She suggested I bring C to check it out so we went to the school to join them.

C couldn't have hot cocoa so he enjoyed a mum mum and chilled watching the big kids drink theirs

The Night Before Christmas

We were so busy for Christmas Eve that I didn't have time to post pictures. We had to bake cookies for Santa, sprinkle reindeer food outside, leave a note for Santa, and say goodbye to Bob. There has been nothing under our tree since little wild man would just destroy it so Andy and I had to bring down gifts as well. Everyone was very excited for Santa to come! We had been tracking him on norad all day.

Baking cookies

Caleb needed an activity but this wasn't good enough

We gave him real icing and he was shocked lol

He didn't want to give it back

Avery REALLY liked the icing


We also put out reindeer food

Supervising


Next we had to get pjs on and read The Night Before Christmas with Daddy. We are so glad he is home to read it in person this year!

Caleb didn't last for the whole story


We put out pumpkin spice cookies and some milk for Santa and A&E left him a note on the dry erase board (some final kissing up before the toy delivery)


The stockings were hung by the mantle with care


We had a certain little boy that was so excited he didn't want to sleep. We had to keep him contained while we got out all the gifts.


Then Santa came!!