Merry Christmas 2024

We had the best Christmas!  Fletcher said it might have been our best Christmas ever.  The kids were all healthy, we got lots of fun presents, had festive plans and we got to go to all of our Christmas gatherings.  That feels like a big accomplishment during a germy time of year.

It'll be hard to top our Christmas card this year!  We were so happy with it!  It was a highlight of our year moment so I'm glad it worked out for our card.  When we were at Notre Dame this summer, they had photographers stationed around campus for pictures.  We had this picture taken - our first every as a family of 5 in front of Touchdown Jesus and then it went missing for months!  They were supposed to email us a link to the photos and we never got it.  Kevin spent a lot of time trying to track down our pictures and then surprised me on my birthday with our missing pictures.  Hooray!

I did a lot less baking this year than last year, but we made time for our favorite treats.

Christmas Eve service at our church is always a highlight of our Christmas season.  I ran into lots of friends from school and Bible study friends that I haven't seen much this year.  We all got real candles except for Leo.  Smart decision again this year.

The weather was pretty yucky all week, but we made the most of it.  We celebrated Christmas Eve with Kevin's family.  Olive and I matched at her request - matching Christma nails and Christmas light tops.  I'll match her anytime!

21 years ago Kevin proposed on Christmas Eve!

Ready to open gifts!  They were so excited about their gift - camping gear, Squishmallows, Tonies box.

Then we zoomed home and got our Christmas ready once the kids went to bed.  We left cookies out for Santa, made reindeer food and got busy wrapping.

Christmas morning was so much fun! We didn't have any big gifts to assemble this year.  Just lots of remote control things and things that required tech support.  I made bacon, eggs and cinnamon rolls and did a little baking while everyone played.

Leo was thrilled to get the missing parts to add a steering wheel to our swing set.  Plus Santa brought him the cyber truck he was hoping for and more.

Fletcher got a mix of practical camping gear and fun things like a 3D printing pen, but was most excited about his Santa gift of a PS5.

All the beauty items + Squishmallows made Olive smile.

So much fun!  Olive and Fletcher combined their wish list and agreed to ask for a PS5 to share.  It's been a hit so far.

Olive surprised me with a set of hamdmade gingerbread ornaments.  She'd been sneakily working on them in her room all week.  They look so cute on our tree.

Mr. Mittens had a great first Christmas!

We celebrated Christmas lunch at Nana's house.  She always has her house decorated so cute.

Then we headed to Christmas dinner with my family.  I brought a cheese board and my mom made a baked potato bar.  Yum!

The cousins were ready to open gifts.

Christmas 2024 was a good one!

I can't wait for another fun week together with a lot more time hanging out at home in our pjs.

December Highlights

I can't believe it's almost Christmas!  We had some fun highlights that I wanted to share with you before Christmas arrived.

1. Candy plates!  I have made a couple of these this season and the kids love them!  I add all the Christmas candy to my grocery pick up list and then make a yummy candy plate to take to parties.  There's something for everyone - peppermint, sour, sweet, wrapped and unwrapped.  This would be so fun to do for any holiday or kid gathering.

2. Road trip to Santa Claus!

We made the 45 minute drive to meet my parents in Santa Claus, IN for the day.  We hung out at their house, visited the Santa musuem, headed to get candy + Iced hot cocoa at Santa's candy castle and watched the birds and deer.  Fletcher got to help feed them with my dad.  A good day wa had by all of us with Mimi & Papaw.

3. Stocking stuffer exchange!  We did a fun activity with my class.  We asked anyone that wanted to participate to send in a small item for each of their classmates.  The families sent in the cutest things - sticker sets, painting kits, sticky hands, snowman making kits, hot chocolate, etc.  The kids were able to pass out the things they brought in and then each kid went home with a really generous treat bag of prizes at the end of our class Christmas party!

4. I felt SO loved and appreciated at Christmas time in my classroom!

5.The games for our class Christmas party were so fun!  I planned the party, parents donated the needed supplies/ingredients and then parents helped manage the party.

6. We had the best time cheering for our favorite teams - ND & IU in their playoff game on Friday night.  As soon as I mentioned hosting a party, Olive said she'd take care of the invitation.  Look at perfect it turned out!  She's a Canva master and I'm so thankful.

We all wore our ND gear and were excited to see how the game played out.

Kevin surprised me with a red moscato for IU that was delicious!

Everyone pitched in and helped me pull a meal of game day foods together.

Yum!

7. We've been enjoying all the fun holiday things this week.  The kid's couldn't wait to make this penguin hot chocolate.  He was so cute and they said the hot chocolate was yummy!

Now I'm off to wrap gifts, bake treats, go to our Christmas Eve service and family Christmas dinner tonight.  Wishing you a very Merry Christmas!

Elf Business: Week 3

The elves have been busy and I think my kids are loving them more than ever :)  Let me show you what they've been up to this past week.  It was a good elf week!

1. Grinch Day!  Walmart had the cutest Grinch things this year.  I grabbed Grinch party stuff for a day of Grinch movie watching and matching t-shirts for all the kids.  Leo had Grinch Day at school so this was perfect.  All the kids wore their Grinch shirts to school.

2. Find 100 mini rubber ducks with Santa hats downstairs.  I think they were allf ound by the end of the day.

3. We made sure your lunches were extra sweet!  I added some extra Chrismtas candy and Christmas napkins to their regular packed lunches.

4. After school hot chocolate bar opens at 4:00pm today!  This gave us all something to look forward to after a long day at school.  The chocolate spoons and snowman marshmallow Peeps were a big hit.

5. We made some new friends and they took us on a ride!  Gingerbread men are fun!  I found a gingerbread ornament for each kid - a gingerbread angel and gingerbread nails for Olive, a Santa baker for Fletcher and a Santa gingerbread man for Leo.

6. Big game tonight!  ND vs IU!  We invited our families over to watch the game with us.  We had a big buffet of lots of yummy game day foods.  We cheered for both teams since I went to IU and Kevin wen to ND, but we were glad to see ND win.

7. Mystery Drink Challenge @ 11:00am today!  The kids LOVE LOVE LOVED this one.  I had 7 different drinks hidden in the box for them to try.  Many different PRIME flavors, chocolate milk and lemonade.  They had the best time sampling the drinks and trying to guess what they were tasting.

It was so easy to do!  Save a box that the drinks could stand up in.  Poke holes in the box with scissors.  Number said holes.  Make a list of drinks in each spot.  Then let the kids sample them.

It was hilarious and so fun!

8. Special Delivery!  Letters from Santa arrived post marked from Santa Claus, Indiana. All the kids were happy to hear that they are on the nice list this year.  We've got a lot to be thankful for

We have just a couple days left of elf fun before they head out on Christmas!

Friday Faves

Happy Friday!  It was another busy week at our house.  We're all ready to be done with school for a bit.  It's almost Christmas Break!  Just 4 class parties and a day full of school and we'll be ready to enjoy a nice, long Christmas Break.

The best parts of our week were:

1. We saw Santa!  Kevin schedule a visit to see the mall Santa and it was so sweet.  Leo was SO excited, but got nervous once we got close to Santa.  Fletcher volunteered to go with him and they both got to talk to Santa.  Santa pictures are my favorite.  Then we grabbed dinner at the mall afterwards.

2. Date night!  We went out to dinner and did some shopping.  We headed to our favorite - Longhorn - and finished up some Christmas shopping.

We found ourselves at the mall once again to pick up Olive from a birthday party.  We eached grabbed our favorite desserts - coffee for him and cookies for me.

Cookie perfection.

3. Reminder to use up your free scoopie tickets from Culvers to grab a free dessert for your family.  I keep the coupons in my wallet and head through the drive thru when I know I'm going straight hom.  You can pop them in the freezer and then enjoy them for dessert.

4. The oldest cousin of our cousin crew - Addison turned 18 this week!  Her Little Debbie themed party was so sweet!  She's the best oldest cousin and always so sweet to Leo.  

5. Mr. Mittens in his favorite napping spot.

6. Leo has discovered Santa mugs and insists on drinking out of them when we are at home.  He looks like a little old man sipping coffee out of his mugs.

7. Christmas chapel.  We had our Christmas chapel service and I was surprised to find out that Leo was chosen as a worship leader!  He sings all his school songs at home so it was really fun to see him perform them on stage.  He walked up there like it was no big deal even though it was a pretty full sanctuary.  I was so proud of him!

8. Cozy Crawl with the K team!  We had a cozy crawl at school where each grade level picked a theme and then put together a food table for everyone to enjoy.  We picked Crockin around the Christmas tree and came up with several crock pot foods for our friends to enjoy.

Every station was SO CUTE and SO delicious.

9. Mr. Mittens.  We all still fight over him.

10. Christmas pj day at school was really fun!

11. Olive was chosen by her peers for student of the month this month!  Yay for Olive!

Happy weekend!  I hope you have a great one.  We're hosting a couple things this weekend and it should be tons of fun.  See you back here next week :)

Linking up with Momfessionals