Our Christmas

This was definitely a Christmas to remember and treasure.  Most Christmases are, but this year was truly special in so many ways.  I don't know if it was all the extra effort I made to do lots of fun things with the kids, or the fact that they are growing up way too fast and I want to savor every moment, but we had a fun month of December and a wonderful Christmas day.  Granted, we didn't do something every single day like I'd hoped, just because I didn't always have the energy, but I hope that my kids will remember the spirit of Christmas and of Christ that they felt. 

Christmas morning 2010 brought us:

A visit from Santa, who did not disappoint.  Here is Aaron's pile (stocking).  He got a huge farm playmobil. set (on the floor).  That was a common theme this year, playmobil.

The night before I told him that if he would go to sleep real fast Santa might stop at our house first before our neighbors.  He was asleep in less than 10 minutes, amazing!  When he came out he was all smiles to see his pile.  Oh, and by the way it took Santa over 2 hours to put that playmobile set together (over 700 pieces!).


This is Aric's pile.  He got the Fireman playmobil set.  He absolutely loves fire trucks, so he got 2 this year!

He couldn't believe this was all for him.  Here he is showing us his police motorcycle.


Here's April's pile.  She is kinda grown out of playmobil, so she got doll beds for her dolls.  She thought it was pretty neat to find her dolls laying in the beds waiting for her Christmas morning.



All 3 kids got Zhu Zhu pets from Grandma.  Those things are funny.  At first I couldn't figure out all the hype, but they're interesting to watch.


Homemade Christmas:

We tried something new this year.  Each person in our family drew a name of someone else in the family to make a homemade gift for.  We didn't want to get a lot for Christmas this year, and wanted the kids to focus on others, so we tried this out.  It was a little tough with the 2 little boys, but for the most part the 2 older kids really understood and made some great gifts.

April had Aric and she made him this ABC picture book.  It has pictures of him or family or something he likes and it is tied in with each letter of the alphabet.


With the exception of me helping her pick and print up the pictures, and giving her some letter ideas she did this totally on her own.  She did awesome!


Aric had Aaron, and since he couldn't do much he just bought Aaron a harmonica (and we ran out of time).  This just about made Aaron's Christmas, I wish I would have gotten the sweet hug that they had after Aaron opened this up.


The Daddy had Mommy for a homemade gift, so he ended up giving her a 2009 copy of her blog book.  It is so fun to read!


Aaron had Daddy, and he was so excited to give Daddy his gift.  He built this box from IKEA, and even wrapped it himself. 

Aric had fun playing with all the little drawers, and was excited about Daddy's new box too!

This is Aaron building the box.  He was so excited to be able to use real tools, and even the Makita with Mommy's help.  Then he loved being sneaky, and keeping the secret of what he built for Daddy.  He did an excellent job!  It's a pretty cool box.


Mommy had April, and as soon as I drew her name I knew I wanted to make her one of these wrap around skirts that I read on Chocolate on my Cranium's blog recently.  They are so easy to make, just lots of fabric and some grosgrain ribbon for the waist!  I can't wait to make more, and April wants more too.  She loved it.  I even made a matching one for her doll (what she is holding in her hands).

It turned out so pretty!!

Christmas morning was grand, and so so fun.  I even let April try out her new roller skates in the kitchen.  It was so nice to have Grandma and Grandpa, and Uncle Marc her too!  We had yummy food all day long, and I even had a planned visit to the hospital for some baby monitoring later that day.  No Christmas baby though.  Oh well, at least we got to enjoy the day together.