Tyler Christmas

We made a quick trip to Tyler to celebrate with Shawn's mom and my parents, on Christmas Day.  We stayed until Saturday.  I wish we could have stayed longer, but Shawn is a preacher so most of the time, Sunday is not an option for being off.  We still got to have time with each set and by Saturday, we had one child running fever so it was a good time to head home.

We spent the rest of Christmas day at my parents house.  Unfortunately only one cousin could make it.  My sister's younger son was VERY sick with viral and then bacterial pneumonia during Christmas!  He is finally starting to do better but we were worried.  My brother and his wife just had their second baby about 2 weeks ago, so they weren't going to travel yet and I don't blame them.  

This is where I get my love of decorating for Christmas from.  This is just one glimpse into my parent's house at Christmas.  I know it is a LOT of work for them, but I absolutely love how it looks at Christmas.  There is something to see everywhere you look....kind of like my house at Christmas.  :)

My stocking rocks!  This is the same stocking I've had since I was born.  

After we opened presents, it was time to prepare for dinner.  Elle wanted to help as much as possible so she ended up on potato duty with Poppy.

 Finally time to eat.  It was DELICIOUS!  So so so yummy.  I think it tastes even better simply because I didn't have to do all the work.

Levi got his own little table and we even lit a candle for him.  He wasn't a bit upset to not sit at the big table.  He loved sitting here by himself.

Cousins...Hayden keeps us laughing all the time!  The girls absolutely love to play with him!

We did Christmas with Barbara back at Thanksgiving so I don't have many pictures this time around.  We did have a marvelous time with her.  She took us out to eat on the 26th and we picked a place we'd never been; Panera Bread.  We really liked it.  It's the perfect place to eat when it's cold outside.  We REALLY owe her big time because she watched the kids while Shawn and I did day-after-Christmas shopping.  I got lots of things I needed and a few things I wanted....and no kids to drag along.  Here they are in Grandma's "section" of the house.

We were good? Um okay, we WERE good!

Stocking are probably my favorite part.

Here are the kids at the top of the stairs.  They haven't seen if Santa has come yet.  Shawn and I make them wait right there while we go turn on the lights and then we gasp and act astonished which makes the kids EXTREMELY excited and antsy to come running down those stairs.  They can see us and our reactions but don't know what we are looking at.  I love this part too.

Then we wave the flag and they flood down those stairs!

Everyone runs to his or her area and begins checking everything out.  Usually they very quickly gravitate to their favorite item.  Levi's two requests this year were a new Cars police car (his other one broke into a million pieces a while back!) and a blue bag of skittles.

 Elle was given my childhood James Avery ring by my mom this past June.  She wore it for less than a week before losing it forever at the swimming pool.  It was a sad and hard lesson on responsibility, for her to learn.  Santa brought her the same ring so she could try again.  She loves that ring and wears it 24/7 and it looks so cute on her finger.

Ava didn't hurt her foot....she wanted crutches.  I think she had given up hope on getting them because she asked for them for her birthday and we were adamant that she wasn't getting them.  This are THE toy in our house right now!  It cracks me up to see them hobbling around on those crutches.  They also got an arm sling and two different sizes of ace bandages.  Hilarious.

This is always my favorite view of Christmas.  I go up on the stairs and look down at the entire living room floor covered in all kinds of great things!

Santa was so good to us this year :)

Christmas Eve; Old and New

Our tradition reading of my 37 year old copy of The Night Before Christmas.

A very nontraditional snack left for Santa this year:

Apricot sugar cookies and Apple Cider.....I just knew Santa would appreciate something a little different than the same ol' chocolate chip cookie and milk. ;)

Our elf should be fired

The job of our elf Mikey is simple.  He is supposed to watch the kids and report on their good and bad behavior to Santa.  The problem is our kids aren't worried about their bad behavior.  Shawn and I are already thinking up some ideas for the coming year to put a bit more fear into our kids about how their bad behavior could equal no toys next December 25th.  We shall see....either way, here are a few of the last things our elf, who is useless in causing better behavior, did before heading back to the North Pole.

Mikey attempted to decorate his own tree but got a little tangled up.

He also went camping one night.  

On his last day here, he attempted some cooking.  We ate all his peanut M&M's one by one throughout the day as we walked past him.

Another year of Mikey.  The most fun year so far...and so many ideas to store away for next year!

Playing with Snow

A few days ago, Mikey our elf left us the ingredients and recipe to make fake snow!  The kids loved it, I got some quite time, and the house smelled awesome afterwards.  Can't really ask for more.

6 cups baking soda mixed with 1 cup of white conditioner equals a good 20 minutes of all kids playing nicely together.  

SNOWBALLS!

Unfortunately this is probably the closest they'll get to making snow anytime soon.

Elf; Week 3

I'm actually sad to say that Mikey will only be with us for 3 more days.  It's been fun to come up with new ideas and props this year.  I only forgot to take care of him twice and Shawn filled in those gaps for me thank goodness.  Anyway, here's this last week's shenanigans.

He started by "adjusting" my grocery list.  I personally would be okay buying all those things he added, but it's really not in the best interest of our healths.

The next day, he took matters into his own hands and went shopping for some needed items, mainly jellybeans.

He "helped" pack the kids lunch for school on Tuesday.  The kids earnestly tried to convince me that it really was okay to pack these things for school and that they'd be fine eating them. 

No explanation needed.  Oh and my kids don't seem too fazed by the idea that Mikey could tell Santa about their bad behavior.  

I saw this "recipe" on Pinterest and it turned out really cool!  Pictures of that in another post but this was really fun to do.

I found this awesome chair at Goodwill months ago.  Shawn thought I had lost my mind when I told him I wanted to buy it.  He couldn't see my vision at the time.  ;)  I love this chair because growing up we had this EXACT chair in life size version!

This morning we found Mikey with a bowtie on, reading his Bible in preparation for worship.  He fits in with our family quite well.

We came. We caroled. We cocoa'd.

Tonight all of the Girl Scouts troops in town converged on the downtown square and sang Christmas carols to anyone who would listen.  We walked the whole area and stopped at quite a few restaurants and sang to the patrons.  They all loved it!  To me it felt completely natural to be walking in public and singing loudly.  Maybe I should start paying closer attention to myself in public?  Do I normally sing songs out loud to myself while running errands???  Anyway, after finishing the singing, we were invited by one of our girl scout moms to have hot cocoa and cookies at her place called Sweet Lemon Inn.  It was a perfect evening for singing and walking and cocoa.  

Here's all that showed up from our troop.  Altogether there were probably about 25 of us!

I'm pretty sure that we have the prettiest downtown square, especially at Christmas time. 

Here we are singing in front of a cute little toy store on the square.

Levi's a trooper for walking around in the cold (with a jacket who's zipper broke when we got out of the car!).  We rewarded him with cookies and hot cocoa too.  He was a happy camper.

So Day 1 of Christmas break is under our belt...and it was a long day.  We had already played 3 different games as a family by 8:30 this morning.  We also attended a funeral for one of our members, that Shawn was doing this afternoon.  Caroling tonight made for a perfect end to a long day!  

Christmas Party Chaos

What has been the most chaotic part of this whole holiday season, you ask???  Children's Christmas parties.  Straight up.  Yesterday we attended two and today we finished with the other one.  Whew.  I'm glad that is over!

We started with Ava's 2nd Grade Christmas Party.  They put on an entire musical with Christmas tunes who's lyrics had been changed to sing of the plight of a gingerbread man.  It was pretty amazing for 2nd graders!  It's too bad that I didn't know this was what they were singing about since I own an adult size gingerbread costume...I'm sure Ava would have loved for me to wear it. Not. 

Then we moved onto the most subdued Christmas party I've ever been to...a 5th grade party.  It was so odd.  The kids were quietly hanging out and painting and slowly munching on treats.  It was such a contrast from the 2nd grade party.  It was also a little sad to think this was probably Elle's last school Christmas party ever.  I hope 6th grade doesn't send us all into shock.  (and no, we didn't mean to match, but it does look cute!)

Last, we headed to Levi's preschool party today.  Now that one was a doozy.  I have never in my life experienced the level of hilarious chaos that I experienced today at his preschool program.  I should have filmed it, but I couldn't even think because it was so crazy.  Here is Levi in a typical showtime anxious stance, smooshing his hands all over his face as he stands in front of a crowd of parents.

Then he forgot everyone was watching and all the boys started getting rowdy.  Luckily all the kids dispersed to get snacks about this time so we were saved from a wrestling match.  Don't mind the fact that Levi's shoes are on backwards, despite the fact that he asked me before we left this morning, if his shoes were on the right feet.

And here we are.  Three parties marked off the list.  And don't judge my dessert plate.  I am who I am.

Smartest decision I made this year with parties: signed up to bring plates and napkins for each party. 

Elf; Week 2

Here's a few of our favorites from this week.

We started with Mikey trying to impersonate Santa.  I was surprised at how quickly the kids spotted him since he blended in really well with all the other Santas on the mantel.

Elle and I had been doing quite a bit of sewing and I think Mikey was feeling left out so one morning the kids found him working on a vest for himself at my sewing machine.

One morning we found him under a chair with the Connect Four game.  He made the letter "M" out of the game pieces.

The kids really got a kick out of this one.  

Cedar is good for one thing.

Cedar is prolific here in Central Texas.  99.9% of the time, that is not a good thing.  Austin is known as the "Allergy Capital of the World" for this reason.  But, there is one tiny redeeming quality of the overpopulation of cedar.  Every year around December 1st, those cedar trees, the ones that look like Christmas trees, start getting decorated like a Christmas tree.  It's everywhere!  We drive a long stretch of road on a daily basis and it has lots of nature areas and we have counted around 20 trees decorated like a Christmas tree in the last few weeks!  It is so much fun to find new ones and see how people have decorated them.  Finally, after living here 7 years, we went and found our own little tree to decorate not far from our house.  We made sure and found one that we will see every single time we have to go anywhere!

The little tree we decided on in all it's "before" glory.

Ta Da!  We have another Central Texas tradition under our belt!