It's Christmas!

After waking up on and off throughout the night and then being told to go back to bed at 6AM. This is how it began...

Max tried out his "Christmas Soda" ...

 "smell it!"

After the stocking frenzy died down. I made them all pose for a stair steps picture and to model their new Christmas jammies.  Since I didn't finish sewing the pants until late last night I wrapped them and put them in the hallway for them to unwrap before coming out.  Max said he put his on at 4am. :)

Mer is loving all things Disney princess these days.  She was laughing at herself here because she asked for a princess coloring book for Christmas.

Doug bought himself quite a few presents this year. Some of them were presented as family gifts. :) Here's his new trailer hitch.

Mer and I tried our hardest to prevent Doug from guessing all his presents as he usually does. We wrapped his presents in odd ways and stumped him all day :)

 Jack made Luke a sweet bunny all by himself.  

 After we opened all the presents we got dressed and went to the hospital to go caroling with some friends from church.

After caroling we had a couple more friends come over for dinner. 

We bought some pies from The Blueberry Muffin Restaurant.  A Chocolate silk and a Key Lime.  the ?best Key Lime I've ever tasted.

After lunch we finally got a little down time and the real playing began.

And movie watching too

 This satisfied smile says it all. It was a very Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night!

Day 22 & 23

Day 22

Make Christmas Cookies for Santa

Monday morning Max woke up and didn't put his boot on.  Freedom!  Thankfully we didn't have to go the doctor to get it off. 

The the day turned into a bit of a Christmas movie marathon. Mer had a friend over.  The boys cut some more snowflakes.

I had to include this picture of max's "unblock me" game.  Doug was trying to tell Max that playing video games is different than playing with toys in real life.  Max said it was the same. Doug said prove it and go build a real life version of the game he was playing. and so max did. :)  and it worked.

Fun with Christmas Tangrams

We did get around to making cookies for santa.  Dark chocolate chip with peppermint morsels. 

The kids then went over to have FHE at a friends house while we finished up the Christmas shopping. 

Day 23

Act out the Nativity and Open 1 present

We had some friends over for a nice Christmas Eve dinner

We dined on steak and sweet potato fries and acted out the nativity.

 We made reindeer food and made sure the lawn was stocked with lots of oatmeal.

 We sang carols around the piano and set out our cookies for Santa.

Luke and Jack made sure to leave a picture present for him.

A sweet end to a sweet night.

Caught up!

Day 16
Put the Stamps on the Christmas cards and Mail them.  Ha ha! It was a good goal but this didn't happen. Instead, for FHE, we sang all the Christmas songs in the Children's songbook around the piano and Frosted our Cookies from the night before. My older kids no longer like it when I take pictures of them. Despite these forlorn looks I think everyone had fun singing along.



Of course the evening was sweetened by a little frosting and sprinkles too.

Day 17

This was a blur. I'm not sure if or what we did that day. I was in charge of a Relief Society Christmas musical program that night so it was all I was thinking about that day.  The kids came and helped me set up for it so we're calling that the activity. My friend posted a video of one of the songs we sang on my Facebook page if you want to see.

Day 18
Make Christmas Cards for our Teachers.  Jack and Luke got busy right away after school with the markers and stamps.

Mer and Max aren't so interested in our Christmas crafts and they've had quite a bit of homework this week. Meredith has been studying for finals like a maniac. She has straight A's right now and has sworn that she's going to keep them.

I went to school that morning to help Luke's class with a card for their teacher. I had each kid write their name on an ornament then I recorded their favorite things about their teacher. I love how it turned out. The kids were so excited to give it to her.

Day 19
Watch a Christmas Movie.  We added cutting out snowflakes as a craft too because we needed something fun to do while the big kids were doing their homework after school. Jack asked, "do you have a craft for me?" Why of course Jack, I almost never say no to extra craft time. We found some "FROZEN" snowflake templates that looked fun and tried our hand at cutting them out.  Now we have lovely string of snowflakes above our kitchen table.

The 19th was also our Anniversary. 16 years baby!

I woke up to these beauties on the bathroom counter.  We spent the evening finalizing Christmas gift plans while the kids watched their Christmas movie and ate leftover Christmas cookies from day 15. Then we treated ourselves to a little trip to Ben and Jerry's. We went out to dinner on Friday for a more official celebration.

Day 20
Deliver Christmas gifts to teachers.
I forgot what the activity was for this day and they actually delivered their gifts the day before. It was Friday Night Pizza and a Movie night anyway so they watched the Grinch while Doug and I went out to dinner.  We've had a lot of packages delivered to the house lately. The kids get so excited when the doorbell rings and have had fun opening the packages from far away family.

Day 21
Drive to see Christmas lights
This was a fun day of work and play. We helped out at an eagle scout project in the morning where the kids hammered old nails down as the other men ripped out and replaced the boardwalk at our favorite manatee viewing location.

We came home and busted out our Saturday chores so we could go to the zoo for a little while.  Luke loves the zoo and he hasn't been able to go much since he started kindergarten.  I've never seen Jack and Luke get their chores done so fast.


The high for the day was 82 so it was plenty warm to swim in the splash lagoon.

We did a little research and found a neighbor hood that has lighted arches over all the sidewalks.  

We parked our car and joined the other bunch of people strolling through the neighborhood. 

There was a man who had his sound system on his driveway.  He was playing Christmas songs on his keyboard and singing to us.   

The neighborhood wasn't too far from where Doug's new boat is parked so we drove over to take a look.

It is Awe.Some! We can't wait to take it out for a ride.

Day 22

Go Christmas Caroling

And finally, last night we went Christmas Caroling.  We invited our friends the Knoblocks over and had quite a choir. We visited a few houses in our neighborhood and then drove to find a few more friends.

 That's all for now :)  2 more days to go!