Christmas Recap

I wanted to take the time to recap our Christmas break even though Christmas feels like forever ago.  I love looking back at the memories from year to year.  We had a nice time doing fun Christmasy things around our city before we went to visit family.  We had a great time visiting family and friends.  It was fun to make memories with our kids and to celebrate Fletcher's first Christmas.  There was a ton of sickness going around, but we definitely made the most of our visit.

I really enjoyed seeing Christmas through the kid's eyes this year.  Olive saw the Christmas lights hanging in our downtown and declared that, "We live in a Christmas city!!"  It was fun to point out all the Santas, fun decorations and Christmas cheer all month long.  Olive was thrilled to see that Santa wears boots like hers and loved checking out decor at a local shop.

Kevin LOVES cinnamon rolls so I took the time to make him some of his favorites when his Christmas break started.  He loved them and it was fun to make his favorite treat a little festive with sprinkles.

Right before we headed out of town for Christmas break our neighbors stopped by with Christmas treats.  I had delivered cookies and cards to many of our neighbors so it was fun to have them return the favor with some of their favorite things.  It was also nice to get to know them better.

We planned a Christmas Eve breakfast with friends and it was SO CUTE!  My friend, Jacque, outdid herself with darling food, decorations and DIY table cloth.  She thought of everything - even tiny chopped up food for the baby.  We all enjoyed our meal and the company.  Our kids had a blast together so it is a sweet time when our kids are becoming friends.  I'm glad we planned this get together when we first got in town because we all ended up sick with a variety of germs by the end of our visit.

 Christmas Eve:
We went to the early Christmas Eve service at the church we grew up in and enjoyed taking the kids.  The service was extra long this year so that wasn't great for the kids, but we still had a good time together.  It was sweet to see Kevin and Olive walking in holding hands and sitting in the service together.
 
Christmas Eve is special for lots of reasons, but Kevin and I got engaged on Christmas Eve in 2003 and I got baptized on Christmas Eve.  It's fun to see our family now all these years and blessings later.

Fletcher loved sampling all the Christmas food, eating wrapping paper and bows and Olive loved opening double gifts since Fletcher wasn't so interested in opening his own.  We got to see lots of family from Kevin's side and had a great evening.

 Christmas Day:
We made some changes to our Christmas traditions this year and it worked out nicely.  Instead of going somewhere different for breakfast, lunch and dinner.  We opted to have a low key morning and enjoy lunch and dinner with family.  We saw Kevin's family for lunch and then my family for dinner.  It's impossible to say yes to all the plans going on and to make everyone perfectly happy, but we tried hard to look out for our family and say yes to our favorite things.  Fletcher still naps twice a day so we did pretty well getting him to nap on the go and nap once at home most days.

We had a relaxing few days playing with new toys, seeing cousins and I 

My inlaws have the prettiest cat.  He's my buddy when we stay there :)

We headed to the mall to do some after Christmas shopping.  We got a cookie treat and did some people watching.

I love my 2016 family ornament.

Cute cousins!!

 We had fun breakfasts - donuts and breakfast casserole were my favorites.

 We ate at Jason's Deli - there free ice cream is always a highlight!
I usually like to get their salad bar, but with it being such a germy time of year I avoided it and ordered soup instead.

 We ended Christmas break with all kinds of germs and sickness so it's fun to look back at these pictures and remember all the fun times we had :)

Hope you had a great Christmas!