Post Christmas Festivities

The day after Christmas, we went to my dad's house for another round of Christmas! Gotta love it! The kids all got spoiled again. I must have been all pictured out as I only took a few there.

Well, I had just rolled out of bed here, so don't mind the no-makeup look, but here is a rare picture of me with some of my siblings. Jennifer, Michael, me, Jack, and Dillon (step-brother)

The kids liked to play hop on Mikey and he didn't seem to mind!

All the kiddos got the traditional pajamas from Grandma and Grandpa! Poor Jace..he still needs a buddy!

 The next day, Saturday, we went back up to my Grandma's for a sledding party. She lives right along the beautiful Snake River and has a perfect little hill. The only thing is that we have to make sure no one goes sledding right into the river! :) Luckily Houston was nice enough to stand down there pretty much the whole time to stop any kids speeding by.

I also did not take any pictures here, but luckily others did and I stole them!

Such a beautiful place

Houston and Jace

Max

Jace speeding down the hill. He loved it. So did Hallie. Flor, on the other hand, was not so thrilled that I made her go down a few times. That's what good parents are for, though, right?

I took a few runs myself. Good times.

Meanwhile, inside....at least someone's happy!

Christmas Day

After our morning opening presents, we got ourselves cleaned up and presentable in order to open more presents. :) My siblings all joined us at my mom's house and we had a a fantastic brunch, thanks to Dave (he is an amazing cook!). We then opened presents there. We had a little while before we headed up to my Grandma's house for yet another party. We love parties! This party is the definition of Christmas for me. You know that Christmas at Grandma's is always going to include:

*Rounds and rounds of food
*Kids dressed as elves distributing presents
*A jolly uncle acting as Santa, passing out gifts
*at least a few solid gag gifts
*games all night long
*more food
*everyone coloring Christmas pictures
*Christmas Vacation
*....and we used to have candy canes in our 7up (and EVERYONE had to drink it that way, whether they liked it or not, but sadly, since we have gone to soup and rolls instead of a sit down meal, that tradition has died. So sad....)

Without further ado, a bunch more pictures:

These two are such best friends and I love it. I am so happy hallie has a cousin her age as my best friends in life have been cousins my age. Such a blessing.

A mid-day movie after the excitement of getting up so early! (AKA: Parent Sanity Time)

A Christmas Selfie: A must. Right?

This scene...with the same green carpet and the same white benches has been recreated every year since I was the one sitting there, a little kid so excited for the festivities. I hope it goes on forever. Maybe next year we'll have to have the 2nd generation do a performance, matching sweaters, trumpets, and all. Can't wait.

This used to be Uncle Charlie and now the baton has been passed to Uncle Lynn. Both excellent Santas.

Hallie was SPOILED rotten by Hailie Birch, who had her name. This is present one of three.

An obligatory selfie in the chair we wish we could still share...

Cute girl with her dress from Grandma. Grandma is a really good shopper these days!

Remember that thing about gag gifts? Here's one, but you'll just have to guess what's in there. :)

Borrowing Uncle Lynn's hat. Who wears it better?

Present 2/3 for Hallie from Hailie (those are different names, by the way. hahaha!) AN EASY BAKE OVEN!! I always wanted one of those! I think I may have been more excited for it than she was!

Hailie unfortunately was at work, so Mari and Ron were supposed to pass on the hugs for her from Hals. 

Another gag gift- and this one has a hilarious story. My aunt Sue is a chronic Zulily shopper, so she gets packages from them all the time...well, this one came with one of her orders (not that she'd ordered it!) so she passed it right on to Ron. At least it was stuffed with candy (and that's a lot of candy if you know what I mean!)

Present 3/3 from Hailie. I told you, so spoiled! Hallie is loving this one. If she hasn't crafted you up a bracelet yet, she will!

Phew! And that marks the end of our very Merry Christmas!

Christmas Morning

Oh the magic of Christmas morning! There is nothing quite like it. It's only been a month since Christmas, but already I can't wait for the next one. Christmas morning as a kid was amazing, but dare I say it's even better as a parent watching your own kids?

The pile of presents. I so try to scale back every year, and every year we always end up with more than I intend for some reason.

Don't ask my why...but this is what she wanted SO badly...a makeup/hair Barbie head. Oh boy. 

And he asked for a remote control car, but Santa accidentally brought him a remote control truck, which he was quick to notice (oops). He got over it fast, though.

And little miss "I am so hard to shop for" got herself a new ipad. Santa is so nice to her. :)

Where's the Florinda?

Just cute.

Jace is sooo into "pets" these days. He loves stuffed animals of all kinds and calls them his pets. He usually has at least two with him everywhere he goes. He got quite a few more for Christmas, including this one from Flor (they had a shopping activity for Activity Days where they could spend Santa Bucks they'd earned and buy stuff..actually really good stuff, too! So she picked this out there for Jace).

And she bought this tie for Daddy with her Santa bucks too!

We have the sweetest, nicest neighbors in the world. They brought each kid a present, which turned out to be a homemade blanket and a pet. Jace was obviously thrilled for his pet, a "woofy dog". This is the family who watches the kids for me, and he loves their daughter's woofy dog, so he got his own now! His even has a collar that say s"Jace's Woofy Dog". Aren't they the sweetest?

Hallie's blanket

Flor's blanket

And well, he's just cute. Boring adult gifts, but they sure are practical!

Christmas Eve 2014

So, here I am, a month late, posting about Christmas. I am just THAT awesome. :)

This year, we planned to stay home for Christmas Eve, have Christmas morning at home, and then head up to Idaho for the weekend. I was on call at the hospital Christmas Eve, plus we liked the idea of not hauling all the kids' presents up to Idaho and then back. But, as with everything, our plans were changed last minute. We saw that a big storm was supposed to hit in the middle of the night, so we decided that it was probably best to head out Christmas Eve to beat the storm. A few of my co-workers were kind enough to take my trauma call, so we packed everything up and headed out that afternoon as soon as Devin got off work. We hit a few patches of snowy roads on the way up, but nothing terrible at all. The next morning, everything was blanketed in white and even my siblings driving from Idaho Falls to Rigby said it was rough. So, that turned out to be a good decision. We made sure to sent Santa a note telling him of our new location for the night so that he would still find us!

Even though it was late when we got in, we did a few of our Christmas Eve traditions before bed. We let the kids open their Christmas jammies, we wrote a letter to Santa, set out a plate of cookies for him, and set carrots and apples outside for Rudolph. Then Popp-E read "Twas the Night Before Christmas" and we all retired to bed in anticipation of the big day!

Christmas Day up next!