Christmas Day

Oh boy Christmas morning is so exciting. Luckily my big boys are still good sleepers. We told them they weren't allowed to come into our room if the sun wasn't up. They agreed to this. I actually woke up way earlier than them because I was so excited. They also know they are not allowed to go downstairs until we say it is time. Once they came into our room. I went downstairs to start the Christmas music, the YouTube log, and put our breakfast in the oven. I make sure the table is set and everything is ready for the boys. In the meantime Max gets all the kids in the bed and shows him some videos about Christ and the First Christmas. They are so excited when I tell them they can come down. I made a video of them coming down the stairs buts its all blurry so I'm not going to put it on here.

Our theme for gifts for our boys were inexpensive, "who cares if it breaks," and small. We don't have much room for any large toys and my boys are plenty creative with everything they already have so Santa left them these body boppers (I really don't know what they're called but they wear them and run into each other..) We knew they wouldn't last long, and if they did happen to last, they could become small enough to store. Other Santa and stocking items included punching balloons, slap bracelets, animal crackers, applesauce, a fruit, juice, socks, and some candy.

 According to my Christmas morning plan, (haha, maybe I'm a little too strict about this) We can see what Santa brought and check out the stockings while Breakfast is cooking, (usually some sort of already prepared breakfast casserole that I just needed to pop in the oven) Then we eat breakfast, clean that up, then we can pass out the gifts under the tree. It was always in this order when I grew up and I like it. Max got himself a torch, so he tried it out on our breakfast.

And I didn't take many photos of our gift unwrapping. Each of my boys got a book, a box of fun cereal, Charlie got a box of washi tape, a pedometer watch, a robot spider ( I scored for free from a neighbor) Miles got some magnet wands, a bike bell, and a robe, Edwin got a robe, underwear, and a ball and truck from his brothers. Grandpa Rob stopped by and brought some fun surprises for us all. And Nana Kay and Grandpa George had sent a fun package for the boys. I don't usually write out all the gifts but they were all so happy with such simple and relatively inexpensive gifts that I wanted to savor this time when they are so easy to please. One of our favorite parts was when Edwin opened his little truck from Miles. He lost all interest in opening any other gifts and drove the little truck around for a long time. Miles was proud because he had picked that out on his own.

 

Max and I were both able to surprise each other a bit even though some of the gifts we gave each other were from our Amazon Wish List. One of those surprises came after all the gifts were unwrapped, and the kids were happily playing. Max said, oh yeah, I have a gift in my car. And he brought in a large package which turned out to be for me and it was a set of Photography studio lights. I've been wanting to play around with the option of studio photography for awhile but hadn't put much research into it. So he did a lot of research for me and surprised me with this great set. So we rapidly cleaned up our tiny living room so I could set the lights up before I needed to put Edwin down for a nap.

And then I took some with my real camera

They were mostly being goofy and totally messing up the sheet, but here they are. 

Then Miles took some of Max and me, in all our (my) bedhead glory!

 He had a hard time getting our heads in the shot. But I like it! haha!

 I've since been practicing with the lights a ton to get better focus and avoid the dreaded glasses glare and even used them recently on a family photo shoot.

Max also gave me this Photography Crystal ball, I had never heard of such a thing but it's been fun to play around with.

 Anyway, we had some cereal for lunch, put Edwin down for a nap. Charlie and Max built his robot spider. Miles played with toys, I played with camera stuff. Then the boys got all suited up to play on the trampoline with their boppers. I was totally expecting them to get super frustrated at each other from constantly being knocked down (like the times we set up the kiddie pool and then they are constantly fighting because the other one is getting them wet?!?! Tell me I'm not the only one) anyway, it was all fun and games and laughter. No injuries, no whining, no fighting. It was a straight up Christmas Miracle!! Then we decided to load up in the car and drive the hour to my mom's house for Christmas Dinner.

We quite literally went over the river and through the woods

The boys and Max and I were spoiled once again by Grandma Sharolee and Grandpa Don.

We stayed late and had so much fun. 
The next day we celebrated with Max's side of the family. Max had some funny gift ideas for a couple of his uncles. a couple days earlier Max had gone to see Aquaman with his uncle and brother/cousin. His uncle mentioned he always wanted a trident. So Max decided to make him a trident out of a fork and then it turned into me photo shopping his uncles head on the aquaman's body (Is that the right title? I don't even know) So that happened

 Edwin was exhausted because it was his naptime and surprised us by falling asleep in Danika's arms.

For Max's Uncle Jay he had these two pictures we had taken at his property in central Oregon. One is a winter sunrise that Max took on his phone when he was hunting one year and the other is a summer sunset that I took.

Anyway,we enjoyed a great turkey dinner and Uncle Jay always spoils all the kids with Nerf Guns and firetruck toys. 

And that was how we celebrated and I'm realizing how worldly this is sounding. I get really excited about giving my family gifts and it was fun to spend time with family and have so much time with my little family in our home.  We are grateful for this extra special season to focus on Christ and Giving!

Christmas Cheer

Having children at Christmas time is pretty magical. I remind myself that these are the years I've looked forward to and the years I will miss after they pass by too quickly. All the traditions and activities and sugar are all so exciting. And our family is in this perfect sweet spot where Christmas is all sorts of magical and they are still so easy to please with gifts. (for example...My Charlie requested tape for Christmas....like a roll of scotch tape!) For the most part they don't even realize they can ask for something they want. So here are some traditions and activities we did this year. Which is basically a photo dump of our December

Cocoa Crawl
This was a first time event. Max's boss was a coordinator in making this First annual cocoa crawl in Old town Gresham. You purchase a Cocoa crawl mug and then on the day of the event you go to participating stores and they fill your mug. We decided to do it and the money for the mugs went to the local schools. We got a little bit of a late start and most of the stops were out of cocoa but we did get to visit some fun shops and the "crawl" ended in the city square where there was live music, more cocoa, visits with Santa and a tree lighting. This part was fun and the weather was not too cold, and Miles got to see the abominable snowman.

Black Friday Shopping.
Max likes going black friday shopping so we make our gift list on thanksgiving night. If there are good deals on black Friday he does that. So basically all our Christmas shopping for our kids is done in November thanks to Max's Black Friday shopping and Amazon...(gotta get our good deals on tape!!!)

Christmas Devotional
Every Year the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Broadcasts a Christmas Devotional where we get to hear a message from the Prophet and other leaders in the church. This year we watched it from our home, and it was a beautiful way to bring the Christmas Spirit into our home.

 

Christmas Luau
Here is a post about that!

Finding our Perfect Christmas tree
Here  is the post about our Christmas tree hunt

Gingerbread cookies
Here is the post about our gingerbread adventures

Christmas Caroling
There was one night my friend and I made cookies and delivered them to some other women from church. I had made some extra cookies so Max decided to take the rest of the cookies to the neighbors and go caroling with all three boys while I was gone. I thought that was pretty brave of him. I wouldn't have ever attempted it...maybe because I'm not a huge fan of caroling. But they all had a blast.Major points for Max!

Progressive Dinner
One of our favorite traditions is our family progressive dinner. It has evolved (or devolved) in the last couple years since my mom doesn't drive a bus anymore so we don't always go from house to house. So this year we just went to my grandma's house and ate all day and played Jingo and did a Pinata and sang Christmas Carols

And I actually had my real camera with me so here are a couple photos of my Red Grandma playing the Christmas music. She is also the one who bribed me to keep going with piano lessons by keeping the chocolate chip cookie jar stocked and challenging me with a couple rounds of Dr Mario every time I went over for piano lessons. (No one can beat Grandma at Dr Mario)

Ornament Exchange/Minute to Win It
On the same day as the Progressive Dinner our friends host an ornament exchange/minute to win it party. Our boys always beg to go to their house so we were all pretty excited to stay up late for their party. I teamed with Miles and Max teamed with Charlie and we went around doing the minute to win it games. 


Christmas Pajamas
We have given our children Christmas pajamas every year for Christmas (I know, not very original) but usually I get them sizes that they should be able to wear the following Christmas. Edwin grew out of his jammies by March so I decided to let my boys open their pajamas early this year so they could wear them on Christmas morning. They each got two sets of pajamas which has made laundry super annoying....(that's 4 pieces of clothing per child.) But they love matching so I'll take it while I can!

Grandpa Rob's house
We went to my dads house to decorate his tree and have a pizza and ice cream party, so that was fun.

Grandma Sharolee's house
One Sunday after church my mom invited us up to her house for dinner and for my boys to do a playmobil advent calendar with her. They also decorated a gingerbread house. And played with one of her new birds, Apparently "Crazy bird lady" runs in the family! Who knew?!

Preschool Performance and gingerbread house
Miles had a preschool Christmas performance and gingerbread making. This was canceled when Charlie went to that preschool because it was so snowy two years ago. Luckily Charlie was already off for Winter break so he got to come and participate. And there was even an extra house for him to decorate. We loved seeing Miles in all his cheesy glory!
 
Edwin downed the candy like it was his job.
 

Cocoa and Christmas Lights
One of our simple and also not original traditions is to fill our lidded mugs with cocoa and drive around the neighborhood looking at Christmas lights, sometimes this is a major win and other times there is fighting in the car (from the kids, not the adults, haha) This year was a win. The lights were magical for the boys and they loved having their own personal cocoa mug. 

Christmas Eve was quite different this year. Every year for Christmas Eve we have gone to my Green Grandma's house. She is 93 years old and a couple weeks earlier she moved into a retirement home. We visited her and wished her a Merry Christmas and sang her some songs a couple weeks before Christmas but Christmas Eve we were home, which we were pretty excited about. We got to get in our pajamas early, get our house clean and ready for Santa. Enjoy a steak dinner. Then we watched Elf, which my kids had never seen. I think our Christmas Eve traditions will change over the years but we really did enjoy the calmness of staying in our own home.

Caramel Apples
For a gift to family members. Charlie helped me make homemade salted caramel and we gave a little package of the caramel with apples.



So there are a coupe of the fun ways we celebrated the season. Stay tuned for our Christmas morning!