Our Christmas Week

Somehow, this week, I didn't even try to do anything in the school room.  I mentioned that we should do spelling on Christmas Eve, but I didn't actually follow through.

My beautiful girls wore their smocked nativity dresses to church Sunday.

They looked so fabulous that I took a few pictures of them when we got home.

I'm such a lucky mama.

Sam, with a little person on his back.  He'll be off to boot camp in less than a month.

I feel like I should get some kind of cool mom award.  We used packing tape to attach glow sticks to Jack's light saber and...

...Eli's sword, then I sent them out in the back yard in the dark to dual on the trampoline.

Because OUTSIDE seemed like a better plan than in my room.

Every time I think, "We're done with little ones, we should get rid of all the Baby Legos/board books/ABC magnets/tray puzzles/etc," I end up having littles visit.  So I'm glad the tray puzzles were spared my last cleaning purge.  I pared down the board books from a large laundry basket full to a single shelf.  I kept thinking I'd do a blog post on which books survived the culling, but it hasn't happened yet.

I was super excited to get a free pack of diapers in the mail to try out with the littles mentioned above.  Ever since Katie and Luke came home, we've used Honest Company diapers (referral link) because they're cute, and they deliver.  I was pleasantly surprised that generic Target diapers work just as well, even overnight.

I've jumped on the Lu La Roe crazy train.  A friend of mine is a consultant, so I got a couple of pieces to try out.  The dress I'm wearing is the Carly.  Katie promptly told me it looked like a nightgown, hence the cardigan.

Our Christmas happened a couple days early, so everybody could be here.

I was a mean mommy.  I told everybody they had to let me take a picture of them with their stocking before they could get into it.

We don't do Santa in our house.  The kids still love stockings, even though they know I fill them.

I wanted to get a family picture while everyone was here, but it didn't work out.  My mom and Annaliese sat in traffic for 4 hours to get here, so we pretty much ate, did presents, Zach's family had to leave (because of early morning work the next day), pie, then Grammy and Ese left.  Honestly, I was in bed with a headache at 8.

So, no family picture, and a couple of the stocking shots are blurry, but fun was had, and Christmas Eve and Christmas Day were very relaxed play days around here.

Zach & Heather got the girls scooters for Christmas!  They tried them out on the porch, since it was rainy when we opened gifts.

Pretty sisters.  All 4 of my girls, while very different, are quite beautiful.

Bri enjoying her new camo shirt from Buddy & Grandpa Gino in Nevada.  We were able to FaceTime with Buddy while we opened our gifts from them.

We have a tradition of passing out new pajamas on Christmas Eve.  Even though our present day had passed, we still did jammies on Christmas Eve.

Bri got more camo.

Eli's PJ pants are super soft!

Christmas day, we had our traditional cinnamon rolls and orange juice for breakfast and then made our faux gingerbread houses, but those pictures will have to wait for another post.


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