Christmas Recap

Our Christmas was nice and chill. The kids woke up, opened gifts, we had some cinnamon rolls for breakfast and then headed off to the in-laws. Then it was to my parent's house. The kids were spoiled rotten.

This pretty much sums up Christmas day, haha. Excitement! Missing teeth! Mess! Toys! A lot of yelling!

The highlight for me was probably when Alice Mae opened up her crocheted hat and fox cowl and say 'ohhhh, thank you Mommy!'. I loved that she instantly knew it was from me. <3 Same with her little cooking kit I put together for her (pink apron with a bear face drawn on, pink whisk, fun green spatulas, painted wooden spoons!). Made my heart melt.

 

 

The kids got, among a zillion other things, scooters, a drum set, a guitar and they each got a wooden treasure box full of craft supplies. I'm pretty psyched to decorate those treasure boxes. I have a few ideas rolling around.

 

 

And husband finally got to see his blanket! I love it so much. This is the best photo I have of it just now but those colors are so pretty. So much green.

 





And so it's over for another year. I'm feeling a little blue after the Christmas season, as always. The house seems so dark after all the sparkly lights. But I look forward to next year! Maybe we'll even be expecting another little one, if all goes to plan in 2015. This is my prayer and greatest wish, at least.

Happy almost New Year! Many blessings.

Tradition!

I love the holidays and I love traditions. Some of my favorite memories from childhood are of our family traditions and now that we have a little family of our own it's lovely to create new ones and bring back some old ones.

Our holiday fun usually starts right after the first born's birthday. We wait until after his party and then I start throwing up some Christmas decorations. The tree goes up after Thanksgiving but anything else is fair game! No shame in my Christmas game.

Some of our traditions!

We decorate the tree together every year. Our ornaments are made up of plastic balls that the kids can't break and family ornaments, some of them passed down from woman to woman in my family. The white icicles are from my grandma as well as some turtle doves and little mice from Germany.

One of my favorite traditions is making a new ornament for each kid every year and one for each other. Peter makes mine, I make his. His is actually in the oven baking right now. He's getting a salt dough gingerbread man that the kids are painting as the Flash. Cool, right?

 



The kids this year with their ornaments. Ollie got a Mario mushroom (due to his new obsession with Mario) and Al asked me for a hippo. She named him Elvis, haha!

 

 

Another ornament tradition- Every year we take a plastic ball and write the date and a bunch of family things that happened. This year- Ollie graduated Kindergarten! We adopted Melody. We bought The Fish of Boe. Etc. I love looking at them every year.

 

 

We do a little calendar countdown every year and also an advent calendar with a piece of chocolate for each kid, which is a big hit for obvious reasons. Christmas Eve is a Big Deal. We have new PJs, a new book, hot chocolate and a movie. We decorate cookies for Santa and make reindeer food and open 1 gift each and then we read Twas The Night Before Christmas. Christmas Eve is totally tied for awesomeness. But I am SO PUMPED for Christmas tomorrow.

 

 

And now I have that tradition song from Fiddler on the Roof stuck in my head! Haha.

 

Merry Christmas, cupcakes. Have a happy one.



It's Yule Y'all! AND CHRISTMAS!!!

First off- Happy Yule! We lit our Yule candle yesterday and it was very warm and festive and did my little pagan heart good. I welcome the coming of the Sun and longer days.

Christmas is just a few days away!!!! Only 3 more sleeps! I feel totally overwhelmed with happy emotions this Christmas and I'm just over the moon. I think I'm more giddy than the kids.

We've had some fun Christmassy fun. Lights, husband's birthday, gingerbread houses, tree decorating, etc.

Ollie made up this thing called Santa Club. He drew invitations and everything. <3 He told me 'Santa Club definitely has cookies' and then looked at me so hopefully, haha. So while they napped that Sunday I made some peanut butter cookies and hot chocolate and when they woke up we had Santa Club! Hot chocolate in pretty cups, which Alice LOVED, with candy canes to melt into them, cookies and a fun candy cane craft.

We enjoyed another Santa Club meeting yesterday where we decorated our gingerbread houses. Okay, so I ran out of gingerbread mix and one of them is a sugar cookie house. It still works! (Tip- if you make sugar cookie houses, let your cookies cook a little longer, like 2 minutes, so they are more crispy than soft and cookie-ish. It'll stay together better that way and not crumble.)

And right after we finished, Ollie's front tooth came out! I don't think there's anything cuter than a kid missing a front teeth. Except maybe a kid missing 2 front teeth.

 

We saw some amaaaazing lights at a park. Totally worth the 15 bucks per car. I cried because it was so pretty. It will definitely become a yearly tradition to go there. Is it just me or are Christmas lights the pretties things ever? They instantly spark a happy little fire in my heart. Even just seeing the lights on my own tree or some little lights in a neighbors bushes.

 

 

And of course we saw Santa! It was THE CUTEST THING EVER. This Santa was amazing. I'm convinced he's the real deal. We met the real Santa. The line was long so he'd occasionally pop around the corner to play peek-a-boo with the kids and Alice saw him and walked right up to him for a hug. Bless her.

 

The best part was when Santa asked Ollie what he wanted for Christmas and Ollie said 'I just want a bell from one of your reindeer's collar'. They finished up talking with Santa and walked away and a second later Santa called Ollie back and handed him a sparkly green bell. 'This just fell off of Rudolph's harness this morning! Can you believe that? And you're the first child to ask for it. Merry Christmas, Oliver.' Oh, my heart. It grew 3 sizes. Big fat tears in my eyes. Ollie treasures that bell. I heard Santa saying to one of his helpers after 'you remember that toy that lost its bell today, well that little boy just asked me for a bell'. I wrote him a little note and left it there for him thanking him for making Christmas so magical for my kiddo. This is one of those things I'll remember forever.

 

What a merry Christmas it already is! I can't wait for Christmas eve, to do hot cocoa and a movie and new PJs and read a new Christmas book. Our Christmas Eve tradition is always to decorate cookies that day and leave a few out for Santa (and some carrots for the reindeer!) and we make reindeer food to sprinkle out in the yard. We read 'Twas the Night Before Christmas before bed and the kids camp out together in Alice's room. And then we magic the toys under the tree. :)

 

 

I love Christmas! My favorite time of the year. Blessings to you and yours. May your heart be full of nothing but love this season and always. Blessed be. xoxo