Home for the Holidays

I kind of can't believe I haven't posted on my blog in over a month! I missed HD's NINTH birthday and Christmas fun. Who am I?! To my credit though, January had been a whirlwind of a month. 

We hadn't had Christmas at our own home since HD was one year old, which means JP and Ms. Gail hadn't celebrated Christmas in their own home, ever. My babies won't be babies much longer so it was important to me that we stay home and have a low holiday at our *new* home. 

HD would not stop bugging me about making cookies for Santa so I had him make them, under my direction. I was a little surprised his siblings didn't want to do any of the cookie cutter portion, but HD did great on his own. 

While Perry and I did some holiday baking in preparation of Christmas day. I was in charge of making eggnog and Kringler and Perry worked on getting a Strada together for breakfast. (This was my second attempt at eggnog and I was impatient during the cooling process, and inadvertently cooked the egg whites... It wouldn't be Christmas without me messing something up.) 

In the meantime, I had the kids work on making Strawberry Santas. It was hard to not micromanage them because I wanted them to look perfect, but they turned out cute anyway. I feel like there should have been more, but they must have been eaten out of excitement. 

We had a skiff of snow on 24th and HD was SO SO HAPPY about it. Literally a skiff and he was out making snow angels on the deck! He spent the rest of the morning collecting and eating it. 

Despite my exhaustion from working the overnight shift, we still managed to get the cookies frosted.

 

I really enjoyed watching Ms. Gail decorate hers. We ended up with several that had sprinkles overload. (That bottle was full...)

 

You know she had requested we bake her a few cat cookies to decorate...

 JP took a lot of time decorating his cookies. He did the snowman on the left and Ms Gail did the snowman on the right (obviously) but when Perry asked who did *this* snowman, JP let his sister take credit for his cookie while he sat back and smirked to himself. He's such a sweet brother.

I was a little surprised as to how long HD stuck with decorating cookies too as well as the time he spent on each one. 

I had to work the overnight shift on Christmas eve, which sucked, but ah well. Knowing the kids would wake up early, we had them sleep in our bathroom closet so they couldn't raid the presents without us. It sounds weird, but if you were to see our closet, it's HUGE and they love it! I made it home by 7:30am and crawled into bed after I realized *everyone* was still sound asleep. I managed to get a good 45 minutes of rest before I started to hear whispering and footsteps. 

Originally Santa was going to leave their presents upstairs by the fire place, but since the fire place was too hot from the fire the night before, he went through the other chimney and ended up in the basement. (Honestly, I just didn't want to be cooped up in the master bedroom while we had a livingroom we could spread out in to open our stockings.) After we made a mess of the livingroom, we raced to the basement to see what Santa left. HD was given his own toolbox, complete with tools, JP was excited to get a build-your-own car, and Ms. Gail received the bean bag she really really wanted. Knowing everyone was going to end up with a Nerf gun, Santa also left Nerf guns for mom and dad. Super high powered ones too! The boys didn't think that fair... Perry's nerf gun held 36 darts, and shot them three at a time. Mine had a reloadable cartridge that holds 12 darts. Before we started opening presents from under the tree, we had a nerf war. 

To determine who would get to open the first present, the kids had to find the glass pickle and Ms Gail was winner. Her brothers were not impressed. 

Perry helped her pick out the best one to start with. 

We had such a relaxing morning in our new Christmas jammies. All the kids were really good about taking turns. I loved watching their expressions as they opened all their gifts. HD had me open his present as one of the firsts to be opened. Earlier the week before he drew a really cool picture of a ship with a scuba diver and coral reef and shark. I loved it and loved all the little details he added. However that afternoon, he became upset with me and ripped it up. I expressed how hurt I was about that because he knew I was wanting to keep it. With out me knowing, he taped it back together, the best he could on his own, wrapped it up, and gave it to me for Christmas. I about started bawling. So this is one of the only pictures I'm in and I'm just starting to open it. 

JP even got in on the joy of giving when he wrapped up one of his hot wheels cars to give to his sister. She opened it and exclaimed, "Oh I love it! You're the best brother! This one is my favorite too!" To which he responded with, "Now we can play cars together." She then proceeded to hug him. He acted like it was killing him, but I know he was loving it. It was so sweet to watch!

I enjoyed all the snuggles throughout the morning. I was *so so* tired come 1:00 so I passed out on the couch for a while. When I woke up, we played with the nerf guns some more. To go along with their nerf guns, we gave the boys a 100 count bag of GI Joes to aim at. We had fun lining them up and shooting them down. JP has pretty good aim!

When we came out of church on Christmas eve, the ground was COVERED in snow and it was so nice to have snow on Christmas! I was not looking forward to driving to work in it though... 

On another note, it looks like Ms. Gail needs a new pair of snowpants! These were size 18 months but she insisted they would still work!