Christmas Day

I think our years of sleeping in on Christmas day may be at an end.  I'm hoping for one more year, but we'll see.  Normally Tony and I wake up early and are waiting for the boys to get up.  Not this year, we slept great except for the fact that Joey was up a couple times during the night.  We let him sleep in our room, on the floor, and he was OUT!  Charlie woke up just before 8AM and we had to practically beg Joey to wake up.  It took some coaxing and then he was up and full of energy.

waiting for Joey to fully wake up so we can go downstairs and open presents

Charlie said he didn't hear Santa this year, but he just knew he had come.  Well, Charlie was right!  Santa did come this year!  The boys ran down the stairs and were shocked to see Santa had set up new toys!

Santa sure knows how to pick out exciting presents!  The boys love to be "worker guys" so new tools and a tool bench are perfect for the playroom.

Charlie had been concerned that Santa would have a hard time getting in our house since we don't have a fireplace.  Luckily Christmas magic worked its' wonder and he was able to get inside and fill our stockings!

The boys each got a new sleeping bag for Christmas!  Perfect for our trips down to see Grandma & Papa/cousins in Cedar City.  We're also hoping for some camping trips this summer.  The bags were a hit!  Tony teased Charlie and asked if he could sleep in his bag too.  Charlie said, "no, you use your old  man bag."  I guess sleeping bags are "old man bags" if they don't have cool themes like Spiderman and Cars haha :)

The boys each got a lego/duplo set and have had lots of fun building cool things.  Luckily we got a new car/train rug for the playroom.  It's great for our trains & cars, but Santa new we needed a rug to help keep all the little lego pieces (somewhat) contained and out of the carpet.

After opening presents it was time to play with new toys and have breakfast!  The older Charlie gets the more fun his toys are.  All of us were in the front room building stuff out of the legos.

Later in the day my parents and siblings came over for dinner.  It was fun to have them here so the boys could show them their new presents!  

We hung out, ate and watched some new movies.  It was really fun having them here.  I can't believe Christmas has come & gone!

Merry Christmas!

Christmas Eve

I know I've said it in past posts, but Christmas Eve really is one of my favorite days of the year.  My favorite way to spend it is right at home doing traditions and listening to Christmas music.

We teamed up and decorated our gingerbread houses (one of my favorite traditions).  This year I saw a tip on TV to hot glue your house together and to the plate before decorating.  This was GENIUS for little kids.  No broken roofs, the candy wasn't too heavy...never going back.

I let Joey pick out the decorating candy at the store.  We had lots of fun things to use...and eat....

Joey's house & Charlie's house

Charlie and I had our second year of making homemade caramels.  We let them cook a couple degrees too hot so they weren't as chewy as I hoped.  But hey, it's a tradition now so there's always next year, right?!

The boys and I made our red and green M&M cookies for Santa.

Joey kept dropping presents because he would not put his gun down

After the baking was done it was time to pull out the presents.  I don't think we've ever put presents under our tree before Christmas.  We always try but with little kids it's hard to explain that the presents sit there until Christmas morning.  We hid all of the presents in the baby's room and the boys were so excited to see how many things were wrapped and hidden.  Everyone helped bring the presents downstairs & under the tree.

Immediately after we did our tradition of opening a Christmas Eve present--new pajamas & a new movie for our movie/dinner party!

This year the boys opened the movie Planes and Planes themed pajamas!

The boys were SO EXCITED about the movie and pajamas.  It made the whole night magical.  Our family tradition is to have lots of appetizers for dinner.  We eat in the family room and watch whatever movie our special Christmas Eve movie is.

Joey was so excited about eating in the family room.  He kept refilling our cheetos (the most important part of the meal, of course) and checking to make sure everyone had what they needed.

Planes was a hit!

After the movie it was time to sample Santa's cookies, set them out with milk and sprinkle the "reindeer food" in the front lawn.  Charlie brought home reindeer food (oats & glitter) from preschool and couldn't wait to put it out.  It helps attract the reindeer, of course.

We read "Twas the Night Before Christmas" then it was time for bed!  The boys were asleep by 7:30pm.  Santa can't come unless you're sleeping and the boys went right to bed!

setting out Santa's cookies

Really, Christmas Eve is the best day of the year.

Christmas Activities

We enjoyed celebrating the Christmas season this past month! 

Here are a few of our highlights leading up to Christmas...

Making Christmas cookies and delivering them to our friends and neighbors.  Charlie did a great job carrying the cookies and saying "Merry Christmas" to everyone.  He is our big helper :)

Driving through the Thanksgiving Point light show.  We love being so close to that place!

Having a special FHE lesson about the Christmas Story.

Counting down the days to Christmas with our advent calendars.

Bessman our Elf came back this year!  The boys loved seeing where he would end up each morning.  We wrote letters to Santa and he would take them to the North Pole at night.

Now that Charlie is in Preschool, we get to attend his holiday school programs.  Joey and I went to his school to watch him sing Christmas songs with his class.

Can you spot Charlie?  Bright blue jacket, in the middle :)

Joey waving to Charlie during the program

We celebrated Christmas together with our Messer side of the family. We drew sibling names for gifts and it was fun to see what everyone picked for each other.

cousins Crew & Finn

watching new movies

Relaxing as a family was definitely a highlight this year.  We love snuggling up, watching movies & having daddy home to play!  The boys and I are going to be sad when our regular routine starts back up in two days.

We started our Christmas vacation with a trip to temple square to see the lights.  The boys loved them and Charlie said his favorite were the green lights.

It has been years since we have been to the temple square lights so this was a lot of fun!