Christmas Eve and Christmas Day were really lovely this (er, last?) year. I loved reliving it as I sorted through these pictures.
We opted for some sledding on Christmas Eve afternoon and it was brilliant - so so fun and very effectively tired out the kids. As always, I was a fairly apprehensive sledder, even down the mild hills over at Lakeview where we went:
Oh my gosh, Carma and Jack kill me in their hats!!
Carma loooooved sledding. Like, a lot. The crying pictures are when it was time to go:
The boys all had a swell time:
despite the occasional crash... or, you know, thanks to the occasional crash ;).
Ohhhh man this guy is cute!
And a good kisser ;). Will covered his eyes when he scrolled through these pictures earlier, so deepest apologies if anyone else finds this one offensive to the eyes hahahaha.
Aaaaand a family shot, courtesy of a nice fellow sledder:
And a solo Will shot, because I couldn't not post this one. I thiiiink it's a variation of his 'selfie' pose...
And then we came home and ate dinner and read the Nativity while the boys acted it out with the toys and then Clyde adorably read to Carma and then we attempted a cute kiddo picture by the tree that went smashingly ;), and then it was off to bed... for everyone but Carma, who helped herself to Santa's cookies haha.
He must not have been terribly affronted by only finding crumbs on the plate, because he came and left alllllll of this for our wee mostly-nice-somewhat-naughty children.
Recurring themes: cereal, books, and socks!
The kids delightfully made it until 6:45am to bust out onto the living room scene and were sweet and excited and gracious upon finding their stockings (aka they didn't have to go back to their rooms and try again, a la last year hahahaha).
Socks were a big hit, as were the legos, swim goggles, pens/pencils, and crayons tucked deep inside. Carma was still half-asleep but seemed pretty psyched about her princesses and stethoscope.
We paused the materialistic celebrating at this point to head to church for some spiritual celebrating - novel concept, eh? The kids were hiiiiiiigh on life and The Worst during sacrament meeting... maybe we should have held on to the stockings and gotten a few more hours of Santa-related motivation to be good? Because apparently religious guilt has no effect on these hooligans as we were in church on Jesus' birthday and they were that wild ;).
Grandma Pam came home with us which was wonderful!!
We had some brunch (holidays bring out our classiness) and then busted into some presents. We usually have the boys open gifts together, so first up was nerf guns, wooooo:
..... and here's the lego wave.....
and the new clothes! Complete with some skin showin' as Will made sure his new Star Wars t-shirt fit ;).
As is hard-wired tradition, we made our way to the kitchen table for the mass assembly of new lego sets.
More random pictures from the day - I feel like I took a nap somewhere in there? I hope I did at least haha.
Carma was sosososo fun this year; super into the presents and fun atmosphere. Grandma Pam gave her a set of Daniel Tiger toys and I think that's the moment Christmas became real to Carma ;).
All of that frozen, somewhat untouched snow in the front yard proved too tempting for Chuck and he ran through it. He tried to get Clyde to come along, but Clyde was mindful of the 'fool me twice, shame on me' idiom and declined the offer (having accepted it last winter and regretting it!).
Will completed his maiden voyage in this, um, fun activity. Don't let the big smile fool you - he instructed me to write "Will did not like it. It was COLD!"
All of our 'no nerf on Sunday' rules flew out the window - the boys pleaded 'family bonding' as justification and I rolled my eyes and put on safety goggles haha - and we ended the day with a few epic nerf battles:
Favorite guy, favorite nerf gun, favorite styling of my bangs.
So it's pretty Charlie Brown tree-esque, but I loved this totally fake tree we used the last few years. This was its swan song which brings sadness to my heart and joy and relief to Chuck's - we might foray back into the realm of 'real' trees for the upcoming Christmas season. We'll see how many times I have to vacuum and then assess if it's worth it...
The good thing about being 10 months behind on my blog is that instead of feeling sad and missing Christmas music and Christmas lights and Christmas spirit, I'm excited to only wait six weeks or so for it to return! I love the extra reminders to think about others and serve and honor our Savior by treating others as He did during His life. Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night!
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