Our Christmas 2012

Wow what a whirlwind the past few weeks have been!  The week before Christmas Ryder got the flu and Maisy had pneumonia!  Luckily they were both healthy in time for all of the Christmas festivities…because you know how we do, lots of stuff going on for the Holidays!

We celebrated with my family the Sunday before Christmas which was so nice because we got to spend the whole day together and not be in a rush to go anywhere.  Mom surprised us with Prime Rib & Crab Legs!!  Mmmm it was good!

  

The kids were so cute opening their presents, they each had their own style!  Ryder would tear open a present, bring it to someone to talk them into getting it out of its package, then run back to open another present just in time to forget about the one the person had been struggling to open for the past 15 minutes!  Maisy kept taking her presents and running back to her & Ryder’s room they have at my moms house, it was too chaotic for her! 

 

They were super excited about everything they got!  Me & Alan got some goodies too :)

Love my fam!

The next night was Christmas Eve so we headed to Church for the candle light service.  Not before taking some pictures in our Christmas outfits.

Oh wait, someone needs to have a meltdown:

Okay, we’re back!

  

The next two were taken by Ryder!!

After Church, Yaya came over for dinner and there were some presents under our tree for her!  There was also a present for each of the kids from Doodle!

(Side note: Do you see how many needles are around our tree and how bare those branches are???  Our tree was SOOO dead!!!  It barely made it until Christmas day, if we just walked by it you’d hear a shower of pine needles come down, haha!)

Okay so Doodle gave them their Christmas Eve Jammies and a little friend for them to remember him by that they get to keep with them all year!

I don’t exactly know what their names are because Ryder keeps renaming them every day, they started off as Snowflake and the Incredible Hulk, but today I heard him calling them Popsicle and Wolverine, soooo….yeah.

It was finally time for Pajamas and to set out Santa’s cookies that we made earlier & milk.  I totally forgot to buy carrots for the reindeer, but luckily Ryder informed me that they also eat apples!  Shew.

Off to bed they went…and then…we didn’t know what to do!  I seriously was a nervous wreck.  I did NOT want to get caught being Santa.  So we waited and waited, decided to make some Raggedy Robins, then finally at about midnight set everything out.  And WOW did it look like Santa had really come!

We were so excited it was really hard to even get any sleep!  Having kids to celebrate Christmas with seriously makes you feel like a kid all over again.  It’s SO fun!  Ryder woke up around 6:00 and asked if Santa had come, we went and woke Maisy up then headed to the Living Room to check it out.  He ran right for his firetruck pillow racer, which I knew he would LOVE!

Then they started opening…It’s so cute because Ryder can read his name now so he could identify each present that was for him.

Ryder was so funny about these popsicles, he saw them in the store when we were Christmas shopping one day and couldn’t get them out of his mind (he goes crazy over stuffed animals).  The last time he sat on Santa’s lap I heard him tell Santa that all he wanted for Christmas was a popsicle!  LOL Santa looked confused…so Mommy sent Daddy back to the store.

Alan & Ryder call each other “best friend” all the time, so Ryder has been giving Alan one of the popsicles to sleep with each night to remember him.

And the opening continued…

Maisy & her Bubble Guppies obsession, she would have been fine with just this one book!

 

They were finally done, so Mommy & Daddy started round 2…we spoiled each other again this year!  Until finally our living room looked like this:

 

It still wasn’t even light outside!  We had a few hours to play and clean up before it was time to have breakfast with Poppy & Nana.

We all exchanged presents, which as you can see above the kids loved everything (and Mommy & Daddy did too, not pictured!)

      

The rest of our day included trips to Aunt Annie’s house, Aunt Dee’s house and Grandma’s house…exhausting, but so worth getting to see all the sides of our families and wish everyone a Merry Christmas. 

The day after Christmas we stayed home and played with all our new stuff.  None of us got out of our pajamas the entire day!  This has become a tradition for us and I plan to make it happen every year.  We run around so much on Christmas day that we really need that recovery day to just relax and enjoy each other.

 

Ryder was so funny this year because he really understands the true meaning of Christmas and why we’re celebrating.  So between each visit he’d be preaching to us in the car about how “Christmas is NOT all about presents, it’s about God & Jesus and having them in your heart” then as soon as we’d get where we were going he’d be the first to ask “is there a present for me here?!”  Hmmmmm.

But he’s right, we try to keep the focus on Jesus’ birth day…without that we’d have no Joy or reason to celebrate!  Obviously we get caught up in the magic of it all as well. 

At the end of the day we went to bed feeling blessed beyond what we even deserve…to have each other, to have family so close that we can visit with during the Holiday season, to have these babies that we have the ability to make smile and feel so special, and to have a Savior in our Lord Jesus Christ who came to this Earth and suffered and died for us…we are truly blessed and we’re cherishing it this Christmas.