It all started on Christmas Eve Eve the kids and I made a cheery Christmasy list of what we wanted to do on Christmas, with the first thing being open 1 present each. That is one thing they were extremely excited about. They have had the present they want to open picked out for a while. They would make guesses as to what they thought hoped it would be. While they were getting ready for bed I let them put their present of choices under the tree for Christmas Eve morning.
There were only those 5 under the tree as we could not put any advance presents out due to the tiny team. If they saw them then they thought they got to open it now. I had to re-wrap a few things and explain to my tearful not so Smiley that yes it is not what you want because it is not your present and now stop opening things up!
They woke up and were overly eager to wake everyone up so they could open them. They loved them.
She was pretty content to just eat the paper.
I wraped all her presents in a Dora paper Evan picked out for her. This certainly helped for people who can't read in our house.
But it did not stop the Grinch from trying to steal them.
Why are you making my princess cry on Christmas eve?
You can't have Christmas without cookies can you? What would Santa eat? What would be breakfast while we open the presents on Christmas day? So we wipped up batches of cookeies with my little helpers of course.
This year with so many little helpers I took the easy out. We made circle cookies and frosted them with store bought frosting and Christmas sprinkles. They were still very good and it was easier.
A change in this year...the kids decided Santa would be hungry after all the hard work of delivering presents. They know because we were all glued to NORAD all day watching where he was. So we made up some homemade pizza for us and for Santa on this special eve.
He enjoyed it!
Our list was full but gave us playing and breathing time. However when suddenly when it started snowing we changed things around a little. We were expecting a few little friends over that day so their mom and dad could make it to Christmas Eve service but with the falling snowy happiness we had to move up our pinata fun. Yes pinata. My kids LOVE pinatas They have so much fun smashing them, getting the candy out and ripping them apart. It is almost scary. A few weeks after Halloween I saw a ghost pinata on clearance for $2!! I grabbed it and thought we would just fill it and have a fun day sometime but with the way times flies before I knew it, I was planning Christmas. So I just saved it to use as a Christmas ghost. Hey there are pretty important in a Christmas Carol past, present and future. Let's recap the main point $2!!! My kids did not care it could have been a birthday castle and they would have had just as much fun and wouldn't it be awkward to beat apart Santa on Christmas Eve?
So as the snow started falling we decided to do this activity we were going to wait for our friends to join us for, while we could still be outside and the kids whacked away.
Oh the loot! They scored! Red and green candy was snowing out of our Christmas ghost. Then the kids decided to jump on the snowy trampoline. It was too cute and they thought it was so silly.
That is Smiley and Faith. I don't have a winter snow coat for her so she is wearing blue :( Trying to catch snowflakes with her mouth as she jumps.
She is still so pretty. I actually looked at a pretty nice coat for her the other day because it is just the beginning of winter here and we will have more snow but I did not get it. It was not that expensive $ 18 and 2 coats in one (just writing that I feel stupid for not getting it) but it was teal and 80's looking and I hated it. I did not want her to have to suffer through the 80's nor her sister who it would be handed down too. I want pink! Maybe purple. I will keep looking. Until then she can keep borrowing her brothers she could care less.
On and I know in all these pictures she is wearing blue but it is Ariel clothes and they were a gift and at least they have ruffles.
Gregory
As the day continued it just kept snowing, and snowing. We ended up with a good bit. A white Christmas!
The boys decided to build a snowman.
They did a great job!
Evan came out to only help with the nose. He wanted no part of the cold snow. But he wanted to claim helping build the snowman.
We kept on going, we kept on bouncing.
We made reindeer food and spread it in our snowy yard so the reindeer would find us.
It was COLD! It snowed earlier that day and the kids still would not put shoes on to go outside. Instead they moved quick and dumped the food quick.
Real Quick!
Then they said mom I can't wait to see Santa's reindeer prints in the snow. Great, thanks kids, luckily he landed on the roof.
They stated up later than usual. As long as they could wait for Santa.
But they couldn't hang.
After a plethora of Christmas movies they went to bed. And slept in late! I had to wake them up for Christmas.
Best Christmas ghost pinata ever. :) Best Christmas EVE ever! Period. Truly, it looks like they had so much fun. You're one seriously awesome mama.
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