Joanie's Family Journal: Christmas 2015

Christmastime is so fun. I planned ahead in hopes that I could get my shopping done early and have time to enjoy the season, put a little more focus on Christ, and not be stressed. It worked pretty well! Between Amazon and two-day shipping, and the Toys R Us Black Friday sale, which I did mostly online the night before, I was mostly set. I also did some shopping while my mom was in town to babysit so I got all my gift cards purchased then. I also purchased the gifts for our Secret Santa 12 days of Christmas. This year worked out well because we chose someone close to our house so the kids could go do it on their own. We only almost forgot once :) Coincidentally we also had a secret santa bringing us gifts this year again! It was fun for the kids. Especially since this particular secret santa brought a ton of treats! I even had enough time to take the kids shopping individually so they could pick out gifts for each other. We kept them small because they all had enough bigger presents they were getting already. But it was fun watching them pick out things they thought the other kids would enjoy. I spent a lot of evenings wrapping presents and I had a lot of boxes piled in my room and in my bathtub! I kept them taped shut so nobody could peak inside. And then I just wrapped as much as I could with myself locked in my room until it was all done a week before Christmas. I felt pretty on top of things!

This year Dylan has decided he no longer believes in Santa. As soon as we started asking about what the kids would like to ask Santa for, Dylan said, “Sure, ‘SANTA’” using his hands to make quotation marks on SANTA. I’ve told him many times to play along and not ruin for Sadie or his friends at school. He says he will, but he will never just say “santa” as if it’s real. He has to make sure I know that he thinks it’s us. I’ve tried to have the talk with him about the magic of Christmas and such but he’s a lot more literal than I would have thought. I was kind of bummed and kind of relieved at the same time. I’m sure it won’t be too long before Sadie loses her Christmas spirit as well. But this year I had Kylee help with Jingles our elf. She moved him most nights. And one morning when I had forgot and Kylee and Dylan came upstairs for school, Dylan told me the elf didn’t move so I quickly ran and grabbed him and moved him while Dylan and Kylee laughed. Minutes later Sadie came strolling up. She’s usually not too far behind the other kids because their bedroom doors down there stick so they are really loud when they open them. One other morning I let Dylan move him when he forgot to move. Dylan thought it was pretty cool.

Kylee has been wanting a mountain bike for a long time now so she knew that’s what she wanted to from Santa. The other two kids had no ideas. Dylan said a remote control car, which is funny because he’s had many of those that he only played with for a few days and I ended up giving them away. So I had to give them some ideas. I asked Dylan about a new bike or a motor scooter. He immediately loved the scooter idea. I found a good deal on power wheels at Toys R Us and I thought Sadie and Kaden would both really enjoy that so I put that idea in Sadie’s head. She wanted a Frozen one, but that’s not the one that was on sale, lol. Plus, I needed something Kaden could use in a couple years too.

Christmas was spread out for months with these kids. They got presents from Ryan’s parents in October before they left for the winter. Then my mom decided to take them shopping while she was here on Kaden’s birthday. They got some presents from their cousins here on Christmas Eve. Then we waited until New Years weekend to head to Newton with my brothers and Dad. That’s why it has taken me so long to organize pictures and get this post put together! I was just a bit overwhelmed.

Christmas Eve Brooke made scones and a yummy dinner for us all. Kaden terrorized her house, succeeding in shattering one ornament on the tile. He’s a busy kid these days.

Christmas morning we all got up around 7. Well, not Kaden. He slept in until like 9. He went through a phase when he slept in a lot. Now he’s up as soon as the kids make noise in the bathroom in the morning. But he missed most of the excitement on Christmas. Which is fine, he got to open his presents alone. He was too distracted after the first present so the other kids basically opened all the rest of his.

I made eggs benedict for breakfast with the sauce and everything. It was yummy, but of course the kids complained. Why can’t they just like yummy food? At what age do they start to appreciate good food instead of what’s “familiar”? Oh well, I enjoyed it. We played with our toys for awhile. Kylee was sporting all her new stuff- running/bball shoes, cute outfit, panda socks from Sadie.

Kaden was super excited about the car that was just his size!

We had fun, but had to put the scooter and droid away since they aren't meant for the snow.

Later we decided to go sledding. We had a lot of snow. It was nice to get out of the house and burn some energy.

Sadie even likes sledding this year. She went so long being scared, I didn’t think she would ever enjoy it. Kaden liked it okay at first but I think he got cold. So he got to warm up in the car.

I had planned to make ham and twice baked potatoes and maybe sweet potato casserole too, but I was too tired and unmotivated after sledding. So we had pancakes instead. It was a fun Christmas!

I totally spaced the Sunday before Christmas being the day we wear our Christmas stuff to church and get to enjoy the Christmas program. So made us all match the next Sunday and took a picture in all the snow! This was our last day of 1-4 church. We are now back to 9am, hallelujah!