christmas recap

We had a great Christmas this year!  And have been having fun just hanging out and enjoying the days without routine.  I have  been waking up each day without a sense of what day it is, which is both nice and a little disconcerting at the same time.  I have come to the conclusion that having no schedule and no routine is not a good thing for our family me.  We need some structure or the days just blur together and nothing gets done.  We had a bit of snow and some REALLY cold weather so some of the days we were trapped inside.

We enjoyed Christmas Eve at our house with my parents (both my sister's and their families were away this year) and our friend Tad.  It was a nice calm evening and the kids were overjoyed to open their presents from Uncle Tad.  He bought them dragons from the movie 'How to Train your Dragon', which is only thing that they asked for for Christmas.  So needless to say they were a big hit.

We have the kids hang their stockings on Christmas Eve.  This year both John and Luke were able to reach to hang their own stockings.  You can see from the pictures below which one of the two is a rule follower and actually posed after he hung his stocking.

Grace actually held onto her stocking this year with her own hands.  She placed it above the stocking hanger instead of on it, but we were just happy that she tried.

After church on Sunday I realized that the kid's clothes were sort of matching and decided to try and take a picture in front of the tree.  We usually use a picture in front of the tree for our Christmas card but this year we didn't and since I love a tradition I thought we'd give it a go.  It actually wasn't too bad.  I did have to bribe Luke with a cookie but I think that's a small price to pay for a cute picture in front of my Christmas tree.

I didn't realize that Grace had hair in front of her face until a few pictures into the shoot and after I fixed it, she refused to look up at me.  So I hope there is a way to erase that hair using photoshop and then I hope I can find someone to do that for me (hint, hint).

We are now gearing up for Luke's birthday which is Saturday.  I can't believe that a) he is going to be five, I'm not sure how that happened but I want him to stop getting older, and b) I have to bake more cookies and cupcakes so soon after Christmas.