Did Santa Come?

On Christmas morning I am pretty sure I was the first one awake at 6:00.  I laid in bed waiting for the first noise from the kids' side of upstairs.  Usually it involves Trey opening and closing drawers in his room for us to realize he is awake.  This morning though I heard him run out of his room.  I walked up to him in the hall and the first thing he said in sleepy wonder, "Mommy, did Santa come? Did he leave presents in our stockings?"  So after convincing him to stay in his pajamas we got Charlotte, sent Daddy downstairs with the camera and went to inspect what Santa left.

Trey seeing that Santa did indeed come.

Charlotte spotting the goodies from Santa.

Trey knew to dig into his stocking right away. 

After Charlotte watched Trey she was determined to get what was in her stocking.

Charlotte loved her Abby Cadabby slippers and wore them the rest of the day!

Trey showing off his Lightning McQueen slippers. 

Proving that the simplest presents are the best, Charlotte has been playing with the ducks from her and Trey's stockings over and over the past few days. 

Trey wanted to read his Chuck the Truck book to go with the Chuck trucks he got in his stocking. 

Charlotte's big present from Santa was a portable DVD player (Trey already had one).  Trey's big present was the Mickey sofa (Charlotte already had a princess sofa).  They still wanted to share Charlotte's sofa to watch their "puters" as they call them. 

As you can see from the pictures we were up and finished with Santa presents before the sun even came up!  This was the first year Trey really got what was going on and couldn't wait to see his stocking and Charlotte gets excited about whatever Trey does.  I look forward to next year when they are both super excited for Christmas morning. 

Christmas Cards

I love Christmas cards; getting them, sending them, looking through old ones.  My favorite are photo cards, especially from friends we don't see very often.  It is neat to see how families have grown and changed over the years. 

This year I was trying to figure out the best way to display our cards.  I saw some ideas on Pinterest and changed the ribbon on kitchen cabinets to putting ribbon on the door to our basement.  I couldn't find any red or green clothespins to hook the cards onto the ribbon so I just used tape to attach them to the wall.  This way I also don't have to worry about them being snapped off the ribbon by little hands.  Trey and Charlotte love to look at the cards and Charlotte likes you to open each one and read it to her. 

I also wanted to display our photo cards from years past.  After some digging in the basement I found our Christmas card from 4 years ago.  I still had one from last year and this year, but the year I was pregnant with Charlotte and Trey was 20 months old was a Christmas card disaster.  I remember Trey would not take a picture for us no matter what we tried, and once we got a halfway decent photo we stayed up until midnight creating the card from CVS because it was December 20th. Then CVS printed them wrong so we had to do them again and they barely got in the mail before Christmas.  So we have no leftovers from that year because I think we actually ran out.   Anyways I used cards from 2009, 2011, and 2012 for this display. There is supposed to be distressed red H in the empty box, but I keep forgetting to order it from etsy :)

 I used scrapbook paper I originally bought for another project and the frames were already on the wall with other printables so this was completely free and took about 30 minutes one evening.

2012

2011

2009

The kids love checking the mailbox for Christmas cards.  They also helped us mail the cards.  Here they are bundled up and ready to go deliver the cards to the mailbox.

Christmas Crafts

Our refrigerator front is filled with Christmas crafts the kids have done at home and at church.  Charlotte and Trey both love to do crafts and thanks to Pinterest I can quickly come up with crafts to do at home.  They really love to paint and especially make handprints.  The other night we made handprint Christmas trees after dinner.

Please forgive my 11 year old hoodie.  It is the most comfy hoodie I own and so I like to rock it on nights at home that involve paint, even if it is not much to look at :) 

Trey's tree

Charlotte's tree

 They also love stickers.  This was craft was leftover from my two year old class at church a few weeks ago.  Charlotte needed help peeling the stickers, but she was all about putting them on her tree and then taking them off the next day.  Trey wanted to fill up his tree so no empty space was left!

Trimming the Tree

Last Friday I thought we could have a picture perfect trimming the tree party.  I was going to make snowman shaped pizza and breadstick shaped candy canes while the boys went and got the tree.  Then after dinner we would drink hot chocolate and put up the ornaments all together.  Yeah. right.

Here is what really happened... I tried to talk Trey into going with his daddy to get our Christmas tree like he did last year.  Trey said the tree on top of my car scared him and he wanted daddy to go by himself.  So Jay took my car to work on Friday and picked up the tree on his way home from work so we wouldn't all have to go out :)

Then neither kiddo took a nap that day, so we knew by 5:00 a special after dinner activity would blow up in our faces with tantrums and whinning, so we didn't even attempt it! We did have our pizza and breadsticks and they were a hit!  We put the kids to bed at 7 and then used our tree entry method of putting the tree in the stand on the back patio, opening the french doors and carrying the tree (stand and all) into the house and setting it down 5 feet from the door. Seriously this is the best tree entry procedure ever and results in very little needles all over the house. 

We had our annual discussion about colored (Jay's preference) or while (my preference) lights and then strung the lights on the tree.  Of course we only have enough white lights for the tree, so we went with white :) I really have conceded the past 2 years and said we could go with colored, but when we look in the Christmas tubs we remember we don't have enough colored LED lights for the tree so we end up using the white ones- not that I am complaining.

All our ornaments are personal for us.  They have either been given to us (or our children) as gifts or we have picked them up when we travel.  Our most recent ornaments have come from our Sunday School class' annual Christmas party ornament exchange.  Each year we get two new ornaments from the exchange and I think we have 8 ornaments on our tree from those parties alone! No matter how tacky we are committed to putting them up, even if they do end up on the back like the stinky cheese ornament we ended up with last year.

As we put up the ornaments Friday night, we laid aside ones the kids could hang on the bottom of the tree.  They had a great time hanging the ornaments.  Trey is really good at putting the hook so the ornaments stas up.  Charlotte had to do it all by herself and if you offered to help her hang her ornament she would hug the ornament to her chest and tell you "NO!" 

Really going with our plan B made the event a lot easier and more enjoyable for all involved.  The kids love looking at the ornaments (especially ones with their picture on them) and it has been fun to watch them get into the Christmas spirit.