Life with Bennett {week 17}

Happy Friday!

We've had a pretty epic week in terms of Christmas events and activities! 

Friday:

Last Friday we kicked off Ella, Lucas and Bennett's 12 Days of Christmas!

Every year I dress my kids up in matching Christmas outfits for the 12 days leading up to Christmas and every year it really does make me question my sanity. I was honestly not going to do it at all this year because hello, 3 kids to dress this year = $$$. But then, in October I started looking through all of the Christmas clothes my kids already had and sadly realized we had quite a few matches. The rest I pieced together by buying secondhand or having my monogram girl make a matching shirt or two! {My instagram is @fergmindy if you want to follow along!}

Speaking of questioning my sanity, I also took all 3 kids to the mall on Friday. I had to return a few things and I was determined to find something to wear to Trav's work Christmas party that Sunday. 

It was every bit of a hot mess as you'd expect. The best part was telling my kids that the security cameras were cameras for Santa to watch them, and they totally bought it! Ella kept saying, "Look Mom! There is another Santa camera up there!" Ha! 

Saturday:

Major GSD (get stuff done) day! I made cookies that Lucas promptly helped himself to...well, actually he helped himself and then took about 20 minutes to eat said cookie. I later found the remainder of it in his dump truck. 

Sunday:

Another Christmas performance by Ella! Lucas was really into the pre-show entertainment!

This time she was an angel!

She did a great job and didn't want to take the wings off! :)

Sunday night was Trav's work Christmas party. Bennett helped me get ready!

Shoutout to Kathryn and Chelsea for answering my 290478 texts about what to wear! This year, the party was at Topgolf so it was way more casual than in past years! Which meant I couldn't do my normal Rent the Runway dress and I had NO clue what the heck to wear!!!

I ended up wearing this shirt, these jeans and these shoes! The necklace is super old and probably from Target?! 

Since it was crazy casual, there was no performer this year (in the past we have had Jason Derulo, T.I., 2 Chainz, T Pain....). However, Nelly just happened to be in attendance so he got up and just randomly started rapping!

Monday:

I was SOOO tired, but had to work at the Y that morning!

Bennett got to ride in the buggy for the first time!

The kids all did caroling in the front lobby and it was the cutest thing. 

Bennett in that buggy (far right) is hysterical to me!

Tuesday:

We met up with our friends at Gingerbread Lane!

Let me tell you how hard it is to get 6 kids under 5 to take a picture!

Both of my big kids loved looking at all of gingerbread houses, but it was SO hard not to touch! 

This one was my fav:

Bennett enjoyed them too!

Wednesday:

We had our church story time Christmas pizza party!

Before the pizza, we sang some Christmas songs!

And Lucas played peek-a-boo with the scarves!

Bennett wasn't sure what to make of all the noise, as usual!

Then it was pizza time! Lucas sat in the chair for about .5 seconds and ate 2 bites of pizza.

After nap, we were feeling inspired from Gingerbread Lane, so we made our own gingerbread house!

To be honest, I was surprised Ella even let Lucas touch anything!

Thursday:

Yesterday was the ultimate adventure: we went uptown to see the singing bears!!

And yes, Chelsea and I totally planned to have all 6 of them match! People looked at us funny 😂

In past years, we have taken the light rail Uptown but yesterday it was pouring rain nonstop. No way was I waiting out in the rain with a stroller. So we drove. And paid $21 for parking. 

We will be taking the light rail every year from here on out! 

Apparently, everyone else with children in Charlotte decided to visit the bears yesterday too and we saw no fewer than about 10 different families we knew! 

These boys sat and watched the bears for about 1/2 of a song...then they were walking/running laps around the bears. 

I'm just really glad Chelsea's husband came along with us to chase the boys, and also to get this picture:

Mamarazzi in action!!

After a picnic lunch, we went across the street to the Ritz to see the Winter Wonderland. 

The girls wrote letters to Santa, while Lucas wouldn't take his eyes off the train that ran around the gingerbread house!

He was so obsessed with it that he actually managed to reach over the fence and disconnect the last car from the rest of the train. Whoops. Since the train was still moving, I couldn't reconnect it, so we just ran out of there quickly before Lucas got in trouble/arrested. If anyone from the Ritz is reading this, I am SO sorry for my crazy child's actions! I hope that poor train got fixed! Please let us back next year!