Christmas!

Never mind that I didn't even blog about our Thanksgiving, I'm just going to skip on forward to Christmas! This holiday season has been SO crazy and it flew by so fast that I actually feel like I've been cheated somehow! I feel like we did a lot, but it was more like I was checking off my list and getting things done rather than truly enjoying everything we did for the holidays. That sounds really terrible but it's just my reality right now. Life with 2 little kids is just plain busy. And crazy. And hectic. And I know that as fast as it's all going, someday very soon I'm going to find myself wishing for these days so that I could live them again while my kids were small. :-)

I was soooo excited for Christmas this year. I was excited to see Sophie and William's reactions to what they got for Christmas of course, but more so I was excited to get to see it all through their eyes. I remember being little at Christmastime and it was magical, exciting and fun - just the way it's meant to be without all the errands, obligations and grown up stuff that makes it less fun. :-)

Since Christmas fell on Sunday this year, we decided to go ahead and ask Santa to do us a really big favor and come to our house on the day before Christmas Eve instead so that we could have a lazy day on Saturday opening and enjoying our gifts and each other without having to rush around to get to church at 9:00. It's enough of a challenge for us to make it on time on a regular Sunday, much less a Sunday that involves the HUGE distraction of a bunch of presents.

I had to include a pic. of our stockings because I love them so much. My great g'ma made mine by hand and I've used it for all of my 34 years. My mom has made the rest of them, all by hand as well. I love this tradition and I hope it carries on with my kids.

santa came :-)

Since I knew at least one of the kids would be up really early, I set my alarm for 6am so that we could gather ourselves a bit before having to stumble downstairs at o dark 30 to dive into the craziness. I'm really glad I did because Sophie was up at 6:30! That gave Matt and I just enough time to get dressed, get some coffee going and turn all the lights on downstairs. Since we didn't want William to miss out on anything we went ahead and woke him up. In retrospect, this wasn't the best idea because it made for a pretty rough morning for little buddy. Next year we will not make that mistake!

checking out their loot

The only thing Sophie asked Santa for was an American Girl doll. Of course, Santa delivered. And he brought twins!

Needless to say she was ecstatic. And she now insists that the boy doll belongs to William. Such a sweet big sister. :-) The gift we were the most excited about was a swing set for the back yard. We totally lucked into this as we had some friends who moved and didn't want it anymore so we of course were more than happy to take it off their hands (thanks again, chesley and andy!!) and decided to surprise the kids with it on Christmas morning. Now. The big plan was to keep all the blinds closed so that they wouldn't see it, then ask Sophie to open them after we finished opening all the gifts. But of course in our world things rarely go according to plan. Sophie just happened to follow me into the spare room when I went to change Willam, and she just happened to glance out the window, of course seeing the swing set. Her exact words were, "momma, there's a playground in our back yard!!!!"

The pictures pretty much sum up how they felt about the surprise. We've been out there every day since. We also got them a huge cardboard playhouse that you can color on. It was a big hit as well. After all what's not to love about a huge cardboard box??!!

busy coloring

The kids got way too much stuff, but they love it all and have pretty much played with everything in the week since.

Sophie really got into making gifts for everyone this year. It was so fun to see her excitement when people opened what she made. I love her sweet, generous heart! She came up with a plan to make William a stuffed bear all on her own, so we went to JoAnn's so she could pick out her materials. Then we drew up our pattern and got to stitching.

I'm really proud of her work.....she stitched all of the outside seam herself! She put so much love into this bear, and is so proud of it. I even wrote down a prayer from her to William and tucked it inside the stuffing. One day I know he will cherish this!

While we opened presents, I put a casserole and homemade cinnamon rolls in the oven. Then Nammy and Papaw came to share breakfast with us.

 The rest of our day consisted of.......being lazy in our p.j.'s and playing with all of our new toys. :-) We spent Christmas day with all the rest of the family and exchanged gifts with them but that is for another post. Maybe I'll get around to that one before the next holiday rolls around!!!

We had such a great Christmas (Eve!). I feel so very blessed to have the family that I do and I look forward to each Christmas to come!