Christmas Keeps Coming

We had our own little Christmas a day before we left for Missouri. Although I love seeing my kids open their presents at every Christmas we have, I know not everyone else does.  But I just have to point out something...

Does anyone see the adorable boy with a cute smile in this picture???  It's so rare to catch it that I HAVE to point it out.

To re-cap, Haylie got Hello Kitty underwear in her stocking and she thought she was in Heaven.

*Parent fail.* Forgot to get Jace's present out and wrapped before we started Christmas...so we distracted him for a minute, wrapped his blankie's around it...but he was a little distraught at our choice of wrapping paper.  He liked his gift though!!

H got a Thomas Pillow Pet.  She almost peed her pants with excitement.

And just because this is the CUTEST smile ever...

I scored major with Christmas this year.  Our room is a freezing cold shell in the winter so I wanted Santa to bring me a heated mattress pad.  Bam!  Must have been good this year because that's what I got!

Justin was excited about his gifts too...you just can't tell.

Well, that just happened.  Who is cleaning up? 

We left the next day for Missouri to spend some time with Justin's family.  Christmas morning rolled around and we had to get some fun pictures of the cousins.

I absolutely love this picture.  This Batman is the only reason I went out on Black Friday (well, Thursday.) My nephew is super into Batman and I knew he just had to have this 31" action figure!  I *think* he likes it...although when we got to MO, I heard he was more into Skylanders.  Welp, hopefully the Batman craze hangs around a little while longer...ha!

Christmas 2013 was a success!

Christmas #1

Christmas has come and gone, but I'm still sorting through holiday photos.  We had a whole bunch of Christmas fun with my family, our small family of four, and then the Cornell side in MO.  We are on holiday overload, but we had fun while doing it.

Our first Christmas was with my side of the family.

We had some holiday sing-a-long time...

And some organized chaos with opening the presents.

We ended a fun family night with a rousing game of Rummikub where I tried several times to rearrange many tiles, never got the result I wanted and had to spend 10 minutes figuring out where everything came from.  I don't know if I'll be allowed to play any time soon...

Merry Christmas #1!

Holiday Fun!

OKC has TONS of things to do in December. One of the fun things is one of the companies here, Devon, puts on Saturdays with Santa.  Since we had a free Saturday last week, we took advantage of it and went downtown!  It was FREEZING and every single family in OKC had the same idea, but we still had a great time.

They had Dasher and Dancer (or Prancer or one of the others), which were fun to see.  I might have said "Reindeer are real?"  I guess I knew they were real, I just had a brain fart (or at least that's what I'm telling myself.)

While torturing ourselves with the unbelievable cold, we made the kids take a group shot!

Back inside, we went to the different stations to meet Mrs. Claus.  Jace didn't really want to sit on her lap, but would give her a high five.

Jace and Mattie are so cute together. Holding hands!

This is my absolute favorite picture.  Can you tell her excitement at these costumed characters?

We drew pictures and "wrote" letters to Santa.

And made Santa beards!

And the most fun of the day was, of course, the little "Polar Express" that was a 2 minute drive around Devon's courtyard.  Haylie was NOT about to leave without riding this so we stood out in the freezing cold to wait our turn.

She got a little cold and only wanted Mr. Matt to hold her...while he was holding Ella.

Finally it was our turn on the train!  We didn't get to ride in the yellow one like H requested, but we settled with blue.

We would have waited to see Santa there, but it was a 4 hour wait. We went to Bass Pro and it was a 4 hour wait there too!  Deciding to chance Northpark Mall, we went and saw Santa in 20 minutes.  That's the kind of wait I'll take, thank you very much!  We had to wait on Santa to finish his lunch and ice cream...

but we got a decent picture once he was back on the clock.

Thanks Santa for the yummy candy!

It's*Finally* Looking like Christmas

Most people, it seems, decorate for Christmas right after Thanksgiving.  Since we have an early December birthday (H), I've decided to not decorate until after her birthday.  Her party was later than usual with Thanksgiving falling weird, so it was in the double digits of December before we busted out the decor.

Both kids were very helpful in setting up the tree...

and wanted to add color lights on top of the white lights of our pre-lit tree.

I made both kids pose with their "baby" ornaments just for fun...(we had to hang J's on...he didn't want to do any posing)

Both from Grandma and Papa.  The shoe for her very first Christmas and Thomas for this year!

Haylie was pretty into helping this year for the first time ever, but Jace could care less after about 5 minutes.  He got into the dance party though!!

 For some reason, Justin went and sat in the other room while we were decorating.  Mr. Scrooge, I guess?

To make the evening even MORE fun, Haylie and I whipped up a batch of homemade chocolate chip cookies.  We had a good time making them, in addition to eating them.  YUM!

And then everyone fell asleep.  JK.  They all wanted to lay under the tree...so we let them.

Our halls are decked...and just in time!