Christmas Highlights

Happy Friday, friends!  I hope you had a wonderful Christmas with the people you love.  I wanted to squeeze in a Christmas recap before the end of the year.  We had a really nice Christmas.  We saw almost all of our favorite people and ate a lot of good food.  The kids loved their gifts and we loved all the extra family time.

The best parts of our Christmas were:

1. Christmas Eve

We got all dressed up and headed to our church's candlelight Christmas Eve service.  The big kids loved the real candles and Leo will be sticking with a flashlight candle for several more years.  We spent Christmas Eve with Kevin's family and had a great time.

Olive and I love dressing festive for any occasion.

Kevin and I were happy to celebrate getting engaged 20 years ago on Christmas Eve.

2. Sugar Cookies

Our elves invited the kids to bake Christmas cookies with mom and we had the best time.  It was a tiny bit stressful to bake with so many helpers, but we got it done.  Our cookies turned out so cute!!  They were delicious!  The kids were so proud of their pretty cookies.  I rarely go to the trouble of making cut out sugar cookies, but this might be a Christmas Eve tradition for us.

3. Christmas morning!

The big kids were up bright and early and we woke up Leo at 7:30 to open gifts.  He wasn't thrilled about that, but he warmed up quickly to the idea of opening gifts.  Santa came!  Stockings were full of fun things and everyone loved their gifts.  Kevin surprised me with jewelry and we were happy to wake up at home on Christmas.

We surprised the kids with a ping pong table.  Leo calls it a bing bong table and makes us all laugh.  It's portable so I'm not sure where it'll land.  Maybe in the family room up stairs, maybe in the garage, maybe on the patio when we have company or maybe all of the above.

The Christmas morning mess + iced coffee.

4. Christmas sickness

Would it even be Christmas if you weren't worried about germs and keeping kids healthy?  We had a mix of ear aches, sore throats, stomach troubles and fevers.  Thankfully they were all short lived and I enjoyed some extra snuggles.

5. Wonka

We went to a movie birthday party to see Wonka with friends.  We loved it!  Who wouldn't love popcorn, drinks, candy and recliners with friends!?  The Wonka movie was good.  I'm a Charlie and the Chocolate Factory super fan so I was extra excited to see it.  The movie is very different from the other two.  It's the story from Willy's perspective.  It's very unique and we enjoyed it.

6. Christmas Breakfast with friends

I hosted some of our favorite friends for Christmas breakfast.  The kids had a blast playing together and we all loved our gifts.

7. Zoo Day

We met some of our friends at the zoo one morning.  The animals were out and active and many seemed to love the cold.  The penguins and otters were very excited to be out and about.  We rode the carousel and loved our cold zoo day.  It was our first zoo trip without a stroller.  I missed having a spot to hold all our stuff.

8. Christmas Cookies

I baked a lot for customers this month so it was fun to do some family baking right at Christmas time.  I love showing up at gatherings with a plate of Christmas cookies.

Kevin's Nana feels the same way about Christmas cookies.  We went to her house for lunch on Christmas.  She makes a fun assortment of Springerle cookies, sugar cookies, fruit cake cookies, butter cookies, caramel corn and more.  Nana is in her upper 80s and is still one of the best hostesses I know.

9. Christmas Cousins

We headed to my parent's house for Christmas dinner.  The cousins exchanged gifts and the adults did a fun gift exchange.  The kids played and we ate some really yummy food.

12. Olive got a really fun bubble rocket!  They've had so much fun blowing bubbles.

13. Fletcher's best cousin buddy turned 10!  They had a lot of fun playing together over break.

14. Christmas Presents

Look at this cute ornament a friend sent me!  It's got the whole family in it!

We've got a few more days of Christmas break and we're in no hurry to head back to school.  We are going to try to squeeze in as many fun things as possible.  I'll see you back here next week.

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