A few days before Christmas we all got to open presents from R's parents early because they were going on a trip. I don't have any pictures of that, because we were face timing with them and holding onto the ipad the whole time. But it was such a special treat to do that with them early. It spread out the Christmas cheer a little and we recognize just how lucky we are to have such good family!
Christmas Eve for us somehow got completely unexpected. One thing after another and we ended up feeding the kids PB&Js at 7pm because our dinner wasn't ready. But we were still able to make it special and read the Christmas story from the bible and acting it out with our adorable homemade hand puppets given to the kids last year by a fabulous aunt. They loved this part!
Then we opened our Christmas pajamas, which the kids thought were the coolest. :)
Small, cozy, and close. My favorite!
I somehow got lucky and snapped a picture of the scene after Santa had dropped all the presents off. Talk about perfect timing!
Santa was very thoughtful in his gifs this year ... each one had a purpose and fit perfectly into Mommy's organizational needs. How did he know?!
And I'm glad he liked the cookies and milk.
Christmas morning started out with the kids waiting at the top of the stairs. The video is long, and really just for my own memory sake. Once Daddy had music, lights, and the ability to keep his eyes open we all came down and the kids got to see what Santa brought.
We opened stockings first.
Perfect morning snack!
Then we took a break and ate a yummy breakfast of french toast and caramel buttermilk syrup. Mmm.
Opening presents was a lot of fun! We took our time, and played with a gift if we wanted to. Which Lady-LE wanted to do after every single gift.
Santa pulled through! This was one seriously happy boy.
Santa overestimated just how close Lady-LE was to wearing the next size up. So we safety-pinned her pants (after she woke up in the middle of the night because her pants kept falling off! haha). She had this little duck tail sticking out all day and I loved it.
Some highlights of the presents.
New climbing rope! Seriously cool!
We laid low the rest of the day, and then go to go over to a sweet friend's house for a potluck dinner. Lots of families came, and it was the perfect touch for us. Ry and I are both middle kids, and I think because of that we both really love and almost need to be surrounded by others a lot. So while Christmas day was beautiful and our own, having dinner with lots of other friends was a perfect way to get in our people-fix. :) We are blessed to belong to a wonderful ward family here in Charlotte, and appreciate all the friends we have.
The next day was completely devoted to legos. Let's just say that it took R a while to warm up to the idea of putting it all together.
After the first couple of pieces started coming together he got really into it.
To the point that he even voluntarily worked on it while L-man had a quiet time in another room. After the quiet time was over L-man joined him on the ground and continued watching. :)
Once it was all put together they played for a long time together.
It was so fun for me to hear them play with the whole set. R was pretty creative too in adding his own little touches to the sets, turbo boosters, extra spotlights, and even a grill for the police officers. He's thoughtful like that. ;)
It was a WONDERFUL Christmas. We were blessed beyond measure - mostly because of the love we share with our family.
R grew up in a family that does a majorly big gingerbread house. Like, years of tradition here.
I've done it with them the years that we're all in Colorado together, and it's a lot of fun. But it's a little intimidating for me to try and do it on my own just yet.
This year, however, I invited all of Lady-LE's preschool friends and mommies to come over for a gingerbread house party. And I am in love with the idea of making this a tradition. A few lessons learned this time around, and next year's party is going to be even better.
L-man was basically on his own as I tried to help Lady-LE, which I think he actually preferred. He was very studious about the whole matter. He took it all very seriously and insisted on so many things it made me laugh.
Lady-LE on the other hand couldn't have cared less for the actual house and just wanted to eat the candy. Let's just say that my kids' houses were the least decorated out of the whole group! :)
First Annual Gingerbread House Party!
Can't wait for more!
December was much longer for us than usual. We're used to traveling for the holidays, and this year we stayed home. So we had the entire month to celebrate, play, keep it simple, and enjoy the season all together with out any huge deadline approaching.
I will be honest and say that I did the decorating around the house when the kids were asleep on purpose. I knew they would play with everything way too much, and I'm not ready for that just yet. :) But when it came to decorating the tree we definitely made it a family affair - even if we had to super glue multiple ornaments back together (seriously, every day for five days straight I had to glue something together again). Decorating the tree, listening to certain Christmas music, and drinking hot chocolate with peppermint in it are all part of the tradition.
Both kids loved it all. They played with all the ornaments and I loved telling them who gave them which ornament and when. Such fun memories! And they loved playing with all the lights in the house off except for the tree. They loved the glow the tree gave to the room, and I loved watching them experience the wonders of Christmas.
A few years ago my mom gave L-man this recorded story of The Night Before Christmas. It was a major favorite this year, with both kids listening to it almost everyday. Lady-LE especially was obsessed, and I eventually had to put it high on the shelf because the book was being 'loved' a little too hard!
Our church put on a Christmas breakfast with a Nativity theme. So they asked all the kids to dress up as part of the nativity. We ate delicious food, and enjoyed a beautiful program that was very sweet, simple, and based all on the Savior.
Then Santa made an appearance and the kids swarmed him within seconds. I bribed Lady-LE to sit on his lap for a candy cane. L-man went willingly and dutifully told him he wanted police legos and excavators. And then he stayed on his lap and continued to chat away for a little while before I asked him to give another kid a chance. :)
Our little angel and shepherd boy. They loved the costumes! :)
We also got a new advent calendar this year that you can see in this picture and we loved it. The kids were such a fun age to understand things and feel the excitement of it all. We kept it really simple, and simple is good.
And thankfully the weather continued to be awesome and we got to play outside in our new rock pit!
The kids love it, and so do our neighbor friends. It's definitely a hit!!
Thank you Pop Pop and uncle J!!
One of our activities in our advent calendar was a family date night to Coldstone for ice cream. Major success: L-man ate ice cream! Not even joking! It was a blue ice cream (cotton candy I think - gross!) and he ate it! This was big, people. Big.
{Of course Lady-LE eating ice cream is nothing new. This girl asks for it every day. She gets it from me}
I hosted Lady-LE's preschool the last week before Christmas, and we did lots of fun crafts. Reindeer antlers with handprints, santa's beard with cotton balls (with snowball fight afterwards), coloring nativity pictures, and yummy snowmen donuts and reindeer donuts.
Logan's preschool did a Christmas program for the parents too, and it was darling!
He loves giving thumbs-up to me. It cracks me up.
And yes, that's L-man's voice above everyone else's. Completely out of tune and off-key. But he sings his heart out and I love his passion for it. Singing is a learned skill, right? There's hope still!
We even got lucky enough to be surprised with the 12 days of Christmas by someone. We never figured out who it was (I wouldn't let us at first, thinking that they would reveal themselves at the end, and they never did! I feel cheated and am sad I don't know who to thank!!). Each night they would leave us a piece to a nativity set the kids could help make. It was very sweet, and we all looked forward to the surprise every night.
We were incredibly lucky to have visitors for Thanksgiving! R's parents, plus his brother and family were all able to come out to celebrate with us. We added eight extra people to our home, and we were all pleasantly surprised to discover that we fit quite comfortably.
Nonnie and cousin S came out a few days early to play. We celebrated her birthday, raked the leaves in the back yard, ate yummy food, menu planned the whole Thanksgiving meal, went shopping, had a small emergency with Lady-LE talked about previously, and played lots of games at home.
I don't know what was wrong with me, because I wasn't camera-obsessed like I usually am. In fact, we don't have a picture of all of us together. There is so much I didn't document through photos, and it was so out of character! But I did catch a few good memories. One afternoon, C and I attempted the rake the back yard. The kids loved it, and we spent hours making lots of piles all over the place. Bagging them overwhelming to say the least! So thankfully Ry came to the rescue and took a break from his studying and work.
And of course this little man helped out a lot too. We all made a pretty good team.
Almost everyone else arrive super late Friday night. So first thing Saturday morning we headed down the street to our neighborhood park. Oh it is so fun to play with cousins!!
It was a lovely morning!
And of course reading with Nonnie is a must. It makes me laugh to see how much the kids wiggle around as she reads to them. There is usually one or two of them who are a little too high-energy for the calm activity, but they try so valiantly! :)
Ry's work schedule was a little off, so in order to have him with us we celebrated our Thanksgiving on Sunday afternoon. We went to church in the morning, came home, ate a light lunch, and got to work! I've never even dreamed of hosting a big meal. In fact I am always terrified of these kind of things. If it were my choice I would always chose the support staff compared to the person in charge. Thankfully, my mother-and-sister-in-law are both amazing at leading and supporting, and we all worked together. In fact, I think they might have done more than me!
So while we worked on dinner prep, the boys and kids got to play with a new fun trax system Nonnie and PopPop brought! Hours of delight, I tell you. This thing is a gold mine.
Lady-LE layed on the floor the entire time just watching everyone run around and be loud and crazy. I liked this open-shutter shot, don't you? Kind of makes me think of how fast the time flies when you're all together with people you love - it seems to go by so fast you can't even see it!
So cue the complete lack of photos. This is the kids table, set up in the living room.
And this is the adult table.
And there's the turkey. I must say, this was my main responsibility, and everyone loved the way it turned out. Crazy delicious.
And sadly that is all the actual-Thanksgiving photos I have. Sheesh. Really wish I would have taken more!
We still had a few days to play afterwards, and while I had all these grand ideas and dreams in my head of showing them around Charlotte, it ended up being the small and simple things I enjoyed most.
Like watching these men build an awesome rock pit in our backyard. Ry had to get back to work, and G & J were so giving of their time and talents! And they were awesome at letting the kids help too, it was so fun to watch.
The kids especially loved all the shoveling and digging in the rocks just to get them into the pile to begin with!
We took a trip to Plaza Fiesta where Lady-LE finally learned to go down the slide by herself thanks to sweet encouragement from Aunt C!
And the kids loved the huge space to play.
We all played at our place a lot, pushed baby S on the swing, and hunted for acorns.
We got to eat out for a birthday dinner celebrating our Nonnie. We went shopping, ate more yummy food, and G&J even helped us hang Christmas lights and fix our exterior lights. Major blessings!!
And the kids liked Plaza Fiesta so much that we chose to do it again! ha!
This time Ry got to join us and we all played the biggest game of tag I've ever been in. Us adults were tired and sore afterwards, I'm not kidding. Sore as in the next-morning-sore. It was hard core. :)
Another morning we all met up with Ry in between some work-related obligations for him at a nearby park for a picnic lunch. We tried to squeeze anytime with him into his schedule, and I'm so grateful we did.
I love how this picture captured L-man's intensity. In your face, big expressions while talking with his hands, and obviously telling you the coolest-thing-ever and needing confirmation from you. Lovingly Lady-LE adores him and gives him all the validation he needs from a friendship. :)
Our picnic lunch was darling and simple. Then all the kids continued to play while us adults sat on the blanket and talked for a long time. Having these meaningful conversations where you exchange ideas, values, and thoughts are my favorite. It is what fills my cup the most when I'm all together with my family. A time where we can really connect with one another and listen, offer our own thoughts, and feel edified through our experiences. We talked about all sorts of things, and I crave conversations like that. Oh I love it.
Sweet Baby S. What a doll!
Cousin S. We played in the leaves again, even though it had been less than a week since we had just raked them all up.
All three older kids loved taking turns with the blower. It was very cute, and honestly the best idea ever. I love it when kids think chores are fun. :)
{Are you kidding me?! We just raked this yard up six days ago!}
The last day everyone was here was Thursday, the technically real Thanksgiving day. I got J & C to run in the our neighborhood turkey trot with me that morning. And PopPop taught the kids how to do the 'wave' as a cheering section since our house was on the race course. We even won a prize for the best cheering section. Don't know what the prize was since we left early ... but oh well. :)
I had to stop not even halfway through the 5k because of my knee. {insert lots of bitter and angry thoughts that I tried to keep to myself} But that meant I got to get the camera and snap pictures of the race. The kids had all lined up to give J&C high fives on their way to the finish line. J decided to tackle them instead.
Then they all ran together to cross the finish line. It was a gorgeous day!
That night was rough for me because everyone was leaving. My kids were being crazy difficult sitting up to the dinner table, and I let my emotions get the best of me. After taking a little breather by myself, I came out and asked C to read stories with the kids one more time while I cleaned up dinner. She loves to read books with them, and I am always so grateful for that one-on-one time she gives them. I was crying while I took these photos because I was so sad it was all ending! After looking forward to something for so long, building up to it, and then it's all over. I had felt completely enriched by their visit. Renewed and strengthened. Empowered even. And I was sad to say goodbye.
We eventually did have to say goodbye. And of course, knowing me, I was too busy crying to be able to say thank you for all that they had done for me and my little family while they were here. So many unspoken acts of service, so many loving gestures and words to my children, so many gifts of time and love. Sometimes I feel weak when I'm alone. And with family I feel stronger.
I have so much to be thankful for. Our gratitude tree grew and grew. In fact many of the leaves had fallen off before I even took this picture. We are blessed beyond measure. And I am especially thankful for the part that family plays in our lives. There is something so deeply felt and understood about the bonds of family that it's hard to put it in words. And I am lucky enough to have that family strength on both sides of my family tree.
We're definitely not perfect. And I for one have a long way to go before I'm near who I want to be. But for now, even with our imperfections, I feel Heaven a little closer when I'm surrounded by family.
