The best day of the Year!

BEWARE: this may be the longest post of all time!

Christmas morning has to be the best morning of the whole year.  Addy came running into our room at about 7 "i think santa came, santa I heard him". So we all went to check the milk and cookies and since they'd been mostly eaten, we turned on the lights in the living room and Santa had surely come.  I showed Addy her stocking and she picked up the pink bear and said, "Santa remembered" it was so cute.  Then she sorta got distracted because everyone else was looking at what they got and she wanted to see too.  We slowly would pull things out and she'd go show Gracie or someone else.  This year some of the things Santa brought were:  Chutes and Ladders, the book Pinkalicious, clothes, a christmas dress, black boots, barbie fairy, small toy story figurines, bracelets, minnie mouse coloring pages, fairy paper dolls, princess lip gloss and nail polish, the pink bear, and some treats.  Santa knew we weren't going to be opening our presents from under the tree until 4:00 so he kinda loaded up the stocking this year.

Coloring our minnie pages before church.

Gotta love the two sides of my kid!

Sadly we never got pictures in our Sunday clothes before church.  Addy was having a super-duper meltdown because her dress was too scratchy.  It took her a good half hour to calm down which was about 2 minutes before we had to leave so we thought we would just take some when we got home.  Of course we remembered after we'd all changed and Addy was taking a nap. So it goes.

We spent the afternoon playing games we'd gotten from Santa, doing our nails with this awesome kit my sister got, and coloring with the kids.

Then at about 4:00 my brother showed up so we gathered for presents. I didn't take any pictures of us sitting on Santa's lap but we all did it.

This is Addy's song.  She made it up so you really can't hear or understand the words but it was still cute.

These kids were just a little excited!

 They helped grandpa santa pass out all the presents.

 And then we each took a turn opening them up.

 a pink bah-bie.

 Mitch didn't want Chelsea to be able to guess what was inside the box so he tapped two boxes together with lots of duct tape.

 Bah-bie makeup, hair stuff and a dress up. Yes, barbie is quite important at our house right now!

 Addy gave Mitch a Dremel tool.  He was pretty thrilled with her choice.

 Princess dress ups from grandma and grandpa.

 She was thrilled!!

Mitch got spoiled with a new sander and skil saw. He totally deserved them!

 I got a yoga mat and yoga socks.  Now my carpet won't get sweat soaked anymore.

 Last of all, Addy got to open the biggest present of all time.

 A dollhouse for all her barbies, made by her dad!  Have no fear, I will be posting more about this amazing house later on because it truly deserves its own post.

 /sigh of relief/,  She LOVED it.  

After playing and cleaning up a little bit, we gathering in the kitchen and opened our poppers, adorned our crowns, told our jokes and ate a delicious feast.

I'd say it was a Christmas to remember.

Decorating with food

Addy was such a great help this year with our neighborhood goody plates.  There was still a lot of licking of spoons and fingers which meant a lot of washing of spoons and fingers, but I was pretty impressed with her patience with all the baking we did.  

Just look at the concentration while she helps with the cherries.

These melting snowman cookies were a new addition this year.  I loved how they all turned out.

We also decorated a gingerbread house a few weeks ago for FHE.  Addy loved it because I didn't care what she put on her side of the house.  So she just put on as much candy as she possibly could.  While saying, "This is so much fun!"

Christmas Eve Eve and Eve

This year for Christmas we went down to my parents and ended up staying for the whole break! We weren't planning on staying so many days but we were just having to much fun being spoiled.  The first night we got down, we went to a cemetery in Ogden who puts out luminaries. There were so many, it just went on and on.  I couldn't get a good picture but it was pretty neat-o.    

The kids loved it because they stuck their heads out the window the whole time (even though it was freezing) yelling at "us" in the car behind.  After seeing the luminaries, we went and drove around south weber looking at christmas lights.  We saw a couple of houses with the lights that went with the music and I think it sparked some ideas in Mitch.  Maybe in 5-10 years we will have musical lights!

On Christmas Eve, we went over to visit with my grandma for a bit and then on the way back we stopped at the Layton lights.  I knew Addy would love them.  On the way I asked what she wanted to see and she said, "an angel by a christmas tree" and I said and angel and a christmas tree and she corrected me and said "by a christmas tree".  Luckily they had an angel with a christmas tree so it was a happy day.  

Back at the house, we had some hot chocolate with pink marshmallows and whip cream. This was heaven for Addy.  Then Addy opened up her Christmas jammies.

And totally loved them because they had princesses all over them! I think she has worn them every night since.

Then grandpa read the Christmas story and Addy used the nativity pieces to show us what happened in the story.  For the next hour she played with that nativity while we read a couple other stories.  She would line then all up with the baby Jesus in the front and then she would put the baby Jesus in the middle and gather everyone around as tight as possible.  It was really cute to watch.  

After stories were read, we put out our stockings for Santa, along with our cookies and carrots for Santa and his reindeer.  Then it was off to bed for the little ones.

It's Party Time

So here goes the first of many Christmas posts to come.  This was our friend/neighbor party that we do every year.  Always a fun time but it is getting a lot harder to think of new fun and exciting games we can play.  Don't worry I searched long and hard and came up with several quite humorous ones.  The first was turning your partner into a snowman by using a full roll of toilet paper, a scarf, hat and a few circles for buttons.  

Once your snowman was completely built, together you had to sing "Once there was a Snowman". 

Our 1st place winners!

For our next game, each pair had to blow up 10 balloons,

 then stuff 5 balloons into each leg of a pair of nylongs,

Then put the nylons on your head and sing "Rudolf, the red nose Reindeer".  I also was going to have a red clown nose for each 'reindeer' but I couldn't find the safe spot I put them last.

 Of course we had a reindeer fight as well!

For our last game, we played christmas pictionary.  Instead of using dry erase markers, we used frosting instead.  We also were drawing lyrics to well-known Christmas songs instead of just christmas words.  It made it a little more difficult.  

Then of course we had our white elephant gift exchange.  This year I gave a fish.  It was a great gift which nobody wanted because we were all going out of town for Christmas so no one was going to be around to feed it!

Thanks to all our fantastic neighbors who aren't afraid to put nylon antlers on their head and be a little crazy.  We truly are lucky to live where we do!