Well... it's March, and I'm blogging about Christmas.... wow. Talk about running a bit behind!!!
Oh well, such as life, right?
Since I know everyone is dying to know how we celebrated Christmas, let's get to it!
Operation Santa Claus was back and came through our neighborhood! It was a bummer that it rained and was really cold, but we still set up camp in the garage with hot chocolate, music, and games and waiting for them to come down our street. We had bags of food to give them for their charity! The fire trucks are always loud and exciting!
So my kids aren't the most crafty kids out there.... these Nutcrackers became a thing of nightmares!! Haha. I got these kits as samples at work, and they had so much fun painting them (all very dark colors) and are SO proud of them. Cracks me up!
Christmas tree hunting is always one of my favorite Christmas traditions!
The tree this year put up quite a fight... Neal had to end up just pushing it over to break the trunk.
Of course they wanted the biggest tree imaginable.... so we went along with it (a bit) and got a tree that looked awesome out in the tree farm... we get it home and yikes!!! We picked a 12ft monster tree!
So proud to have put the star on top! Such an important job.
Ain't she a beaut, Clark???
I was so excited to go to the Fantasy Trail this year! I had heard about it the year before but the weather never worked out (rain rain rain rain) so this year was finally dry and we could go! They open only from 6-9 pm, so we got there right at 6. They have fake snow falling, the trails are all lit up with lights and little scenes from storybooks... it was incredible!
The 80's called, they want their Santa back!
This picture doesn't do the lights justice. The whole trail is just a big loop in the forest, so you can't get lost, which makes is great for kids to tend to run up ahead of their parents.
There is even a big pirate ship "maze" with pirate scenes, pirate music, a shaky bridge to walk across... so cool!
This is the best you get when you ask your kid to take a picture of you!
There was one whole area that really reminded me of Enchanted Forest. It was all these little houses you can go in and they had tunnels that connected them, slides leading out of them, dead ends, mazes inside, etc.
Appropriate place for these two! We are definitely putting the Fantasy Trail on our Christmas "to do" list every year!
Another night we did a neighborhood walk-about and bundled up and looked at all the neighbors lights. I don't know what it was about this year, but hardly any of our neighbors put up lights. It was a bit of a bummer.
Ready for Christmas Eve Eve, and for family to come over!
Santa and his ummmm reindeer.
We actually celebrated Christmas with Neal's family on December 23rd so Uncle Grant could be there. We had lots of food, and the boys were spoiled of course. They got cool pirate ships from Poppa!
Auntie Lori helped decorate some brownie trees! They were low sugar, low fat, of couse... haha. #ExtraSugarOnTheSugar
Uncle Grant and Auntie Lori helped the boys put together Legos for hours!
On Christmas Eve, we gave the boys gifts from Mommy and Daddy.
Gotta love costumes!!!! Especially when Mommy gets them at a sample sale for $1!
Well, we finally gave in and got the boys Kindles. We figured it was time since Austin already works on a tablet a bit in Kindergarten (although they do way more "old fashioned" paper work, which I like) and we travel down to Gramma and Grandpa's enough to warrant them needed some entertainment in the car.
They were a hit! And since I'm actually writing this in May, I'm proud that they have followed the rules really well and only get their Kindles in the car or certain times. We haven't had too many battles over screen time, and they know their Kindles are "treats". Hopefully we can get it to stay that way.
Henry looks so thrilled to be in the middle of the mayhem.
It snowed on Christmas Eve!!!! I can't remember a time when we had a white Christmas! We didn't get much, but it was so fun to have some real snow!
Christmas morning and my baby colt... I mean huge child (look at those feet! They are SHOVELS) is eager to see what was left by Santa!
Let the madness begin...
Lion Guard set!!
Austin is so my dramatic kid. This reaction to a Legos set is pretty epic. He was stoked!
Down to my family for the rest of Christmas Day and the madness continued at Gramma Darlene's house!
We had a lovely collection of boxes and wrapping paper.
I am making it my life's mission to capture as many awkward pictures of Neal eating as I possibly can.
Sometimes the classics are the best.. remember the boxing robot game??? Yeah, it's still around and it's still awesome!
