Since Sept I had tried to come up with the perfect solution to how we would do Christmas this year since we would be traveling on Christmas Day. I debated and debated if we should bring some of our gifts with us, should we bring ALL of the gifts with us, or should we bring none of them. Oh and when should Santa make his appearance? I hated the idea of opening them ALL before because that doesn't make the actual holiday very fun so we at least had to save some of the gifts for Christmas. But with 5 people in the family now there wasn't a ton of room for gift storage in the car. Those were a few of my thoughts as I debated about what to do. McKay wasn't much help because he just wanted us to only buy one small gift for each person and call it good. Boring! This is all coming from a man who had HUGE Christmas's as a kid. lol
After lots of thought I decided that like last year we would do our own little Christmas at our house on the Dec. 23rd and then pack up and head to family's house and we would bring a few gifts with us so that we each had something to open on Christmas too. We explained to Adalyn that santa would be coming early to our house since we would be at Grandma's house on Christmas. Ofcourse she was just fine with it and was excited to see her presents. She was just sure that Santa was going to bring her an Elsa Dress, just like she had asked for.
Santa and his wife stayed up super late that night to finish packing and set up the tree for in the morning, Oh and Mrs. Claus decided to go to Zumba that night too so the last minute things got a late start...
But it was all worth it in the morning when the kids woke up. Here they are waiting for mama to get ready to so that they could go look at the tree.
Adalyn was pointing because she was just remembering that Santa had come. :) So fun having a child that actually/sort of understood what was going on.
Checking out the presents...
The sled was a big hit Christmas morning. They still have yet to go sledding for reals though so we will see if they like it then.
For their "big gift" Santa brought Jensen some wooden blocks and Adalyn got her beloved Elsa dress. Funny story, when she pulled the Elsa dress out she told us that it was a Cinderella dress What?! Since then she has been convinced that it IS an Elsa Dress.
She ofcourse had to try it on right away.
Jensen's favorite part of the morning was the all you can eat candy and snacks in the stockings.
Declin slept through the mornings festivities so the others helped open his gifts. His big gift from Santa was the fisher Price Nativity. Mommy was excited about that one. We think he will enjoy it next Christmas.
After a while Declin made his appearance and we all helped him open his last present.
I feel like these pictures accurately show my life with three small kids. They are always surrounding me and "helping" me with everything that I am doing. :)
After all the presents were opened upstairs Adalyn had one last gift that was downstairs. It was from Mommy and Daddy and it was too large to move. So we tied a string from the present downstairs all the way up the stairs. She had to follow the string to find her gift.
Her gift was new to her dollhouse that we refinished for her. Yes it is massive, plenty of room for all of her dollhouse friends.
McKay and I had fun decorating it and "remodeling".
We put in new hard wood floors and tile in replace of the dated pink carpet that was there before. We also painted the outside of it, and added new girly handles and shutters to the side windows. The inside walls are still pretty bare, so we may add things over time. But this was about all we could handle this year.
After the gifts we ate a yummy breakfast of bacon, eggs, and Rhodes cinnamon rolls (which are just as good as homemade in my opinion). After breakfast we packed up and headed to Utah.
Christmas 2014 #1 complete
p.s. After experiencing Christmas this year. We I decided that I want Santa to come on Christmas from now on. So we will probably not be having 2 Christmases in the future. Just one on Christmas day (wherever we are). If the kids are given a gift that is too big to take with us like a bike then they will be given a token object (like a helmet to go with the bike) on Christmas day with a note and picture telling them about what is waiting at home. I think this will be better then trying to divide the fun and excitement between two different days and simplify things for us parents. They don't ever get to really play with their gifts while we travel anyways since we don't want to loose pieces so I think it will work out ok.
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