Christmas Week

Our Christmas Eve was Monday, since we celebrated early this year, due to Paul's work schedule.

Christmas Eve means new pajamas for everyone.

You'll notice Katie's AFO in the PJ pictures.  It's been a while since you've seen it, since she is down to only wearing it at night.  We go back to Shriners early next year, and we'll see if she needs to continue or if we can take a break.  I think she needs adjustments to her prosthetic leg while we're there, too.  It seems to be fitting funny to me lately.

The older kids aren't as crazy about me taking pictures of them in their jammies any more, but the little ones are still game.

Our Christmas morning (which was Tuesday), Grammy & Carl brought Annaliese up, and Zach, Heather and Brayden came over.  We started with stockings, then took a break for cinnamon rolls and orange juice, a family Christmas breakfast tradition.

Then we started in on presents!

It was a nice time, with everyone enjoying one another's company.

This was our first Christmas with Heather and Brayden!  My first Christmas as a Nai Nai.  I went with a "theme" and got him a fire station, a fire engine book, fire truck jammies, and some bath stuff.

Paul got the sign from his mom.

Our family does 3 gifts per person for the kids (and grandkid!), so when you multiply that out by a dozen, and add in gifts from Grandma in San Francisco, Grammy & Carl, and grandparents in Nevada, we did presents for a couple hours.

If it looks like the front room floor is completely covered in chaos, that's because it was.  We use cloth gift bags for all the gifts from us, but there was still a lot of packaging, and paper on gifts from others.

I was a blessed mama this year.  Zach and Heather got me a space heater to keep my feet warm in the school room, and a nice multi photo frame.  I ordered some prints to go in it, and I'm going to put it on that wall in the background with our old family picture (the frame is also black, so they'll go nicely).

Our day after Christmas (which was Christmas Eve for everyone else) was a low key, fun day where we made our annual faux gingerbread creations.  Hannah really got into it this year.

This is her finished creation.  I think it will be a couple more years before Katie and Brayden really get it.

The square candies inspired my "game boy" playing Tetris.

Bri's structure collapsed like a house of cards.  Katie is in the background licking her frosting knife.  I'm glad I wasn't sharing a can with her.

3 boxes of graham crackers, 2 boxes of cookies, several pounds of candy, and 7 tubs of frosting.

As I said on facebook, 40 minutes of chaos, followed by an hour of clean up!

But it's fun, and the kids would never let me skip it, now that it's a tradition.

My nativity scene.  I usually have animal cookies as sheep, but couldn't find any this year.

Josiah has a collapse proof method.  His structure is solid.  He starts off by frosting and sticking together all his graham crackers to make a brick.  Then, he doesn't have to worry about it falling apart while he's decorating it.

Jack's finished creation.

You can't really see it in this picture, but Zach had bears going up a ramp outside his structure.

12/26, we took down the tree.  Not only because Christmas was over, but also because Daddy got Mommy a new couch for Christmas, and I was anxious to set it up!  I'll share pictures of it in next week's post, hopefully Friday.  Our schedule is pretty off since everybody is off school right now.

Thanks for clicking for us!