Christmas Morning

We had such a wonderful Christmas! Calin and Capri enjoyed it so much this year! And it was fun having my mom here celebrating with us.

On Christmas Eve the kids opened up some pajamas. I love how excited they are for such simple things! They also opened up a Christmas book from Dom and Jenna that we read to them that night when they went to bed.

We skyped with Alan and Stephanie and their boys while my mom read "The Night Before Christmas" to all her grandkids. We read the story of Jesus' birth and sang Christmas songs while my mom playing the guitar. We ate lots of cookies and drank hot chocolate. And once the kids were in bed we watched Elf while finishing up all the wrapping.

Calin's preschool teacher made them a bag of "Magic Reigndeer Food" to sprinkle on the lawn Christmas Eve. So we made sure to do that too, and left out some milk and cookies for Santa.

We had lots of presents under the tree this year. Grandparents and Aunts and Uncles enjoy spoiling my kids at Christmas! I did lots of homemade stuff for the kids and wrapped lots of things I normally would have given them earlier (like clothes. My kids hardly had any clothes that fit them since I was saving them all as gifts for Christmas). Turned out we had way too many presents. Capri was half way through when she decided it was time for a break and took her stuff to the toy room to play with while we made breakfast. We pretty much had to force her to open the rest of the presents later that day. I'm sure Calin could have opened 50 more though. He was having a ball!

This is their excited faces Christmas morning

 Calin had been asking for a "red-light green-light toy" for months. I had no idea what he was talking about so I made him one hoping it would work. He was thrilled and loves it!

Capri's big gifts this year were a princess castle and a small play kitchen. She also got lots of dolls, and some blocks that she loves and a few movies.

 My mom is so funny while opening presents! If everyone has 20+ gifts each to open, and she only has two, she will still be the VERY last person to finish opening her gifts. She will sit there and talk about how pretty the wrapping paper is, and then the ribbon/bow, probably even inspect and comment on what a wonderful tape job the giver did . . . . and so on. Then when she finally gets to the gift she is always SO excited about it. Even when it's just a little key shaped like a guitar. She will spend 30 minutes looking at it and talking about how amazing it is before moving on to the next gift. Filling a stocking for this lady is a bad idea. She will take 3+ hours opening all the little stocking stuffers!
Mom, we love you, you make us laugh, and we love that we can always count on you to make opening presents on Christmas as long as possible!

 This is how Calin responded to each gift he opened. I loved seeing so much joy and excitement from him and Capri! Calin's favorite toys were a new scooter, a green rocket, jake the pirate remote control car, and a Darth Vader toy (somehow he got REALLY into Darth Vader a few days before Christmas so my mom found him some fun star wars toys. I don't even know how he knows who Darth Vader is)

 We got Calin a new bat and a baseball glove. Jordan has taken him to the park quite a bit since Christmas, and wow this kid can sure hit that ball! Jordan does well teaching his the basics, and Calin LOVES to learn and have people teach him how to do things, so Dad (my dad) when we visit, make sure you spend lots of time sharing your baseball knowledge with Calin. He'd love you as a coach! And you wouldn't even have to trick him into hitting left handed since he already does :)

 Everything Capri opened was her "special _________" Here she is after saying "Aww! It's my special princess helmet!" We loved it!

 My kids are definitely my favorite Christmas presents.

Oh, and proof our little Taylor was around for the fun too. I don't know why I didn't get a better picture of him. On Christmas he was 12 days old.

Jordan's dad came over in the morning and joined us for the second round of opening presents. The rest of the day we relaxed, skyped with family, went on a nice walk and let the kids ride their bikes around the park. My mom and I made Christmas dinner while everyone else took naps. We sang some Christmas songs, and tried to have lots of moments where we took a step back from all the fun gift giving/receiving and focused on Christ and the true meaning of Christmas.