I’m sure you’re all tired of the Christmas post recaps but bloggers gotta blog. We spent the holiday in California with just our little family. It’s our third year of doing this and I will selfishly shout from the roof tops that I love it. No running all over the place, no packing up tired, cranky kids, or living out of suitcases. It was glorious.
On Christmas Eve we managed to shower, dress and hustle all three kidlets out the door in time for the 6:30 pm candlelight service. We were pretty self congratulatory on managing that Christmas miracle until we pulled into the parking lot and saw the big sign out front welcoming everyone to the 6:00 pm service. Face palm if there ever was one. Unfortunately we also told the kids that Santa would only come after we had gone to church (behaved!) to celebrate Jesus’s birthday. Sooo…we had a lot of backtracking to do as we could not find another service before midnight mass. We’re hoping we get an A for effort and we’ll try much harder next year. #sorryjesus
Back at home, PJ our elf, had left the kids a gift to open on Christmas Eve (new PJs!) and we set out our cookies for Santa and the kids went to bed without a peep.
I still can’t believe we have three little nuggets to dress up in matching Christmas jammies. I live for matching sibling outfits.
We smuggled in our big Santa gift from the garage and I filled up the stockings while Matt struggled to put together a last minute gift addition, a balance bike. It just wouldn’t be Christmas Eve without drinking and cursing while building toys.
Thankfully we haven’t entered the crack-of-dawn wake up for Christmas morning era so we enjoyed a late wake up and were able to capture the kids coming into see their gifts.
They were so overwhelmed with everything and Hudson’s little mind was blown that Santa actually scooted down the chimney and left him a kitchen in the living room. I’m convinced that seeing their faces on Christmas morning is the crowning joy of parenting.
We took our time looking through stockings and playing with our new toys all morning. And toys there were thanks to our VERY generous family. It looked like ToysRUs up in here but as Matt said, if worrying about how many toys my kids get on Christmas is my biggest problem, we’re probably doing ok.
Well played by Pottery Barn Kids on the GIANT size of those stockings. You drop something in them and it falls to the bottom like a pebble in the Grand Canyon. Luckily, Santa is super sneaky and filled them up with exciting items like band-aids, undies and diaper wipes.
We spent the rest of the day alternating between gift opening, snacking and napping. My kind of day!
I hope your holiday was very merry and we’re looking forward to a fab 2016!
