Holiday Recap Part 3: Christmas!

Now on to the real deal!  We had a wonderful Christmas!  After sprinkling the reindeer food all over the yard, we headed to my brother's house for Christmas Eve festivities.  We played {they love their cousin's toys}, dumped sprinkles on decorated sugar cookies for Santa, ate pizza, and opened TONS of presents!  Holy moly the wrapping paper was flying!  I had asked the kids what they wanted for Christmas and the only real answer was Levi saying "mop".  So, I found toy cleaning set including a mop.  He opened that and was done- ha!  Caroline and Allison just wanted to open gifts- didn't much care what was inside.  Caroline would go from one to another saying "more".

Decorating cookies

The set up

The action!

Levi opening his mop :)

This year we had to decide how to do gifts amongst the kids.  We went with 3 gifts per child from us, plus stocking stuffers, and one thing from Santa per child.  All I know is that I had a lot of gifts to wrap!

Following the present opening, we walked the block checking out Christmas lights.  There was one amazing house and the owner was passing out candy canes!  You better believe my kids didn't hesitate on that!  Once we got back to the house, the kids were put in pjs and we drove home.  We set out our sprinklefied cookies and milk for Santa and put everyone to bed.

Christmas morning they didn't really get the concept that Santa visited, but they sure enjoyed the tricycles and Little People set up!  They had little interest in their stockings.  LOVED the cinnamon rolls for breakfast and Leah's awesome car!  A family friend rigged up a ride in toddler car so Leah just has to hit a green switch on the steering wheel to make it go, and built in supports so she can sit in it.  SO COOL!  And she can do it all by herself :)  Of course, the others love it too, but that's ok.

Leah in her car

Alli checking out her stocking

Caroline playing

Busy checking everything out

Leah with all her stocking stuffers

We played the rest of the morning and headed to my cousin's house for the big family dinner that evening.  I'm not sure how many people gave them cookies, but enough that they had no interest in the actual meal and just wanted to run around the backyard with the dogs.  Fine by me!  Burn that energy.  Of course, once it was present time, they couldn't wait to rip in.  They received so many wonderful gifts this year I honestly haven't even opened everything.  Need to do a MAJOR toy overhaul and reorganization.  We had a great time with the family visiting and eating entirely too much delicious food!

The day after Christmas the fun continued with a quick trip to Galveston where some family members rented a condo.  We planned to visit the beach and resort playground, but the kids had so much fun running around the condo and balcony and throwing bread to the birds from the balcony, we never left!  The adults enjoyed relaxing, visiting, and playing a quick board game while the kids entertained themselves.  They even made their own conga line and went around the condo saying "Choo! Choo!"  Silly kids.

All in all a crazy, busy, fun Christmas season!  Not gonna lie, it wore me out and we took New Years week to relax and stay home.