Christmas 2017

Happy 2018 friends!!! 

I didn't mean to take such a long break from here, so I thought I'd go back and recap our Christmas before too much time got away from me!

On Christmas Eve, Ella and I went to church while the boys stayed home to cook and watch football! 

Since our church only had an 11:00 PM service (I am wayyyy too old to be going to church that late!), we went to the church at Ella's preschool! It was great, and she even saw a friend from her preschool class there!

The candle lighting at the end made me suuuuuper nervous, but thankfully Ella did great and the church did not catch on fire! 

When we got home, it was time to open Christmas Eve presents: pajamas and books! 

We also sprinkled reindeer food on our front lawn. And by "sprinkled," I mean Ella dumped out the whole bag in one spot. 

We also left cookies and milk out for Santa!

Once everybody was asleep, Santa came!!!

Santa was really smart this year and wrapped all of Ella's presents in the light blue paper, and all of Lucas's in the other paper with the characters on it! That way, we knew whose present was whose without having to read gift tags!

See?! He was really here! ;)

Both kids were super excited to open their gifts the next morning! 

{You can see here for the full run-down of what Ella and Lucas got this year!}

Lucas's favorite presents were probably the toy trucks "Santa" found at the dollar store!

After presents, it was time for cinnamon rolls!

And then our families came over with even more presents!!!

So we opened presents again! 

The aftermath:

{that bottle of wine is obviously not for the kids 😉}

I will say that having the Christmas tree in the playroom was actually the most genius idea ever. It took us all of about 10 minutes to put the new toys in those bins over on the left and get everything organized! Yay!

Ella got right to work on her fairy garden. I was a little nervous about this, since I have a black thumb, but I'm happy to report it is actually growing a few plants now! 

While the kids napped, Travis, his sister and her boyfriend cooked our delicious meal! 

Ella ate absolutely none of it. Typical.

Lucas, however, went to town, eating everything and then some!

After dinner, we played more with all of our new toys! 

These magnetic tiles were a HUGE hit...I've already added more to both kids' wish lists! :)

And you know it wouldn't be a holiday with me if we didn't have some sort of family photo shoot going on! 

Another fun Christmas in the books!!! It really is so much more magical with kids!