CHRISTmas 2018!

We had a busy season as usual this Christmas! We kicked it off with our annual Christmas party with the Cains....the kids are always so excited for a visit from Santa and he didn't disappoint this year! We had so much fun eating and opening gifts and playing our White Elephant exchange.

Somebody brought Beanboozled and let me tell you.....I will NEVER play that game again. Ever. If you're not familiar, it's a game where they have different colored jelly beans that can either taste like something good (peach) or something disgusting (vomit). So you spin a wheel to see what color you have to eat and then basically don't know for sure what you're going to taste. Of course, as luck would have it, I got the vomit jelly bean. Literally gagged for 20 minutes. But we all got a great laugh out of it!

A few weeks later, the kids had their Christmas program. They were thrilled, as you can see...

Those faces.....you would have thought I was asking them to jump off a bridge with how put off they were by taking this picture. Sigh. At least they're cute ;) All of the grandparents got to come watch them sing their hearts out!

At some point in the season, we took a few pictures for mom to use for her Christmas cards.

The Kirkpatrick's had a sick kiddo on Christmas Eve, so we got together with Nick's parents and opened just a few presents and had dinner. It was quiet without ALL the cousins, but it was nice. I didn't get any pictures of Christmas Eve.

That night we left cookies out for Santa with letters.

 Just in case you can't read Tommy's, I included a close up. And it says COUCH, not....the other thing you might think--ha!

We got to bed and the kiddos woke up so excited the next morning!

We opened presents and hung out for awhile. They both got a bunch of stuff to take to Florida/Disney World (they just didn't know yet that's what it was for!). We got them both DVD players as their big gifts and they were so excited! We knew they'd come in handy on the 20 hour drive to Disney.

We got around and headed to my mom's house to have Christmas with my family. We were telling my kids and my nieces and nephew that morning that while we were in Florida, we'd be going to Disney! They had no idea and we were so stoked to be able to FINALLY tell them. We put together a scavenger hunt for Christmas morning...

We put each clue in an envelope with one kid's name on it so they would be able to take turns opening the clues. They had so much fun opening the clues and figuring them out--the final clue was a box with each of their names on it. They each had a stuffed Disney character and a balloon in their box and the balloons said, "You are going to Disney World!"

They were thrilled! And we were just as excited to tell them! It was a fun morning for everyone :)

After mom's house, we went home and crashed and just relaxed for the rest of our Christmas day. It was perfect!

Thanksgiving 2018

Thanksgiving was super chill this year! We hosted my family on Thanksgiving day. It was nice not to have to get up and around to try to get out the door this year. We're usually heading to my mom's house by noon, but this year we got to lounge around for a bit before everyone came over. I did a face mask and the kids were actually reading together (that stopped as soon as they noticed me taking a picture, of course).....

Everybody came around lunch time and we enjoyed a feast and lots of family time together!

After everyone left, Tessa decided she wanted to do a face mask too...."Hello, Clarice."

We were doing Thanksgiving with Nick's family a few days later, so we didn't have anywhere else to go. We all crashed on the couch the rest of the evening and the kids ended up falling asleep out there. 

It was such a great day!