Christmas Time is Here....and gone.

Our Christmas was great. It was filled with lots of family and fun events. We had a progressive dinner with Jarom's family, and a cute nativity, gift exchange, and nice turkey dinner the next day. Unfortunately I only have video from those events, and they are too long to post. We visited my Grandma who is in the hospital with some hip trouble and opened gifts with her. We also had a nice dinner and opened more gifts with my family on Christmas day. It was just one big party that kept going and going. Here are some highlight pictures from Christmas Eve and Day at our home.




Kate with her Christmas ornament. I know that she looks like a boogery mess, but when she's clean I think Kate looks a lot like this little Christmas dolly.

Carter and his Curious George. If you've ever watched the new cartoon series our Carter looks and acts just like George. It's pretty cute.

Halle and her Karate star. Even though she quit karate, we still thought it was appropriate to give her a karate ornament this year.

Alyssa likes to collect ballerina ornaments and I found this pure white one since she was baptized this year.

Dressed in new pajama's ready for bed! Right after this we heard Santa's sleigh bells outside our window. He must have been flying by to check on the going-to-sleep progress. Alyssa started screaming and FLEW to her bedroom, Halle freaked out and started crying cause she just knew they were going to be missed by Santa since they weren't asleep, and poor Carter bawled his head off because the girls' reactions scared him so bad. It was pretty hilarious! A few minutes later Grammy and Grampy dropped in to get a recipe and they were able to hear all about the excitement.

CHRISTMAS MORNING! "Did he come?!!! Can we look?" The girls got up at 5am, but I was a mean mom and made them go back to bed until 7. They actually took it really well, I was quite surprised.

The untouched scene that Santa left.

Santa has always left breakfast of apple juice (usually in little cans, he must have been lazy this year), poptarts, and little cereals.

Alyssa and her tent and a Vera Bradley bag.

Halle with her radio and tent.

Jarom and Carter in the train.

Carter's Thomas the Train tent.

Kate opening presents and getting into everything.

Kate's little vacuum. It's the cutest thing I've ever seen to watch her try to clean up. She really knows what to do. It's darling.

Check out the bow on her bum. I'll take her for a Christmas gift any time!

Santa was full of surprises this year. He left us furniture in our den!! I think the kids went on sensory overload when they saw this stuff. It was really fun.

Carter and the new computer desk! Check out the chocolate on his face. I think he had been enjoying his stocking before this.

The poof pillow is still growing. It is about twice this size now. The kids think it's the coolest thing to watch it grow. They LOVE to play on it.

Well, the Chirstmas holiday has come and gone. I feel like I spent days and days, hours and hours, of preparing, only for the big moment to have flashed by in a second. But it was all worth it. The kids loved it, and there were many memories made. Here's to next year!