Christmas 2016

This past Christmas was one of the best yet!  We all woke up early and after brushing our teeth (mom and dad's orders) we headed downstairs....

Christmas presents!

Making our way down the stairs.

I got the lightsaber I wanted!

Sedi went in the sunroom right away to  play with his new trains.

My mom got a hedgehog mug :)

Thanks for the secret santa gifts Kennedys!

After a full day of opening presents and lounging around
in pajamas, it was time for dinner.

My dad made his famous prime rib
(it was delicious!!)

All in all, it was an absolutely amazing Christmas!  I hope your's was great!!

Christmas eve

Christmas seemed to come and go very quickly this year, but that doesn't mean it wasn't a good one!  As usual, on Christmas eve we went to the 4pm children's mass and participated in the Christmas play.

There were a lot of kids who wanted to be part of the play this year!

 After mass, we headed up to our Grammae and Papa's house for our annual Christmas eve party with our family.

Seddy really enjoyed Papa's christmas
village and train set.

There were plenty of appetizers to go around.

The lasagna for dinner was a big hit! 

The traditional dance to "Jesus was born today".

Once the dance was finished we opened presents from Grammae and Papa and from the cousin gift exchange.

Posa got a new American Girl doll! 

I got some clothing, earrings, books,
and other great gifts. 

Dessert time! 

Cookies for Santa :)

Stay tuned for my next post: Christmas day!

Pre Christmas December happenings

This December was one of the best I've ever had.  We baked cookies, hung out with friends, bought Christmas present and just had fun!  Here are some of the activities we did leading up to Christmas...

Baking sugar cookies with cousin Sophie.

My mom took the littles out to main street for the morning.

We had some friends over for a brunch one Sunday.
There were ten kids 11 and under!! 

Potty training
(she still hasn't quite figured it out)

I had a couple horse lessons this December.

And my mom took them with me!!!

One of the many beautiful frosty mornings.

There were a lot of fun family dinners in the weeks before Christmas.

Our annual out to dinner and zoo lights trip.

(the light tunnel was a perfect selfie op.)   

Christmas caroling and dessert with friends.

My dad got a Christmas tree from our church this year.

Decorating!

As always, we went to Let's Play for cousin Christmas gifts.

Snow day!!

Helping with the neighbor's ducks (and goose).

Some friend hosted a fun sleigh ride and Christmas song night.

Our annual December music recital.

James has had a lot of fun at Trail Life these past months!

Christmas fun day.

Merry (late) Christmas!

Christmas fun day

After the "snow storm" 3 weeks before Christmas, we had to reschedule our Christmas fun day in Portland to the next week.  But about 30min before we were going to leave, it started to snow.  We were determined not to cancel again so we all squeezed into the Pilot (which has four wheel drive) and started to drive.  We were just passing our county's mall when other cars headed for Portland started to turn around.  At this point, it was starting to snow pretty hard, so with heavy hearts we turned around and went to the mall for our fun day instead.   

Smushed in the Pilot.

There was absolutely NO ONE in the mall so there
was no line to see Santa.

We all made the nice list!
(we were all pretty surprised about some certain kids ;P)

There were fun game on the way to Santa.
I think this one was the "Elfie Selfie" station.

My mom couldn't take pictures inside the
fun land without paying. 

After Santa, the next stop was the Lego store. 

There was a new American Girl shop in the mall.
Of course, Gemma made a friend.

By then, it was about 4pm and the mall's stores were starting to close because of the snow.  Near the mall was a Red Lobster so my dad called to see if it was open.  Amazingly, it was!

A nice waitress let Cellie touch a lobster.

There was no one at Red Lobster either so a food came quickly.
I had never been there before and it was really good!

Once we left the restaurant, my dad put some chains on the car so it
didn't start slipping on the road.

We took a back road because the roads were pretty jammed and
got to see all the pretty Christmas lights :)

Anyway, on our way home we heard on the radio that the normal 45min drive to Portland was taking up to 6 hours!  That made us pretty glad we didn't go on our usual fun day.  The funny part was, the whole time we were out my dad kept  getting texts from frustrated friends and family about how they were stuck on the roads.  Of course, we didn't get stuck in any traffic!  We really dodged a bullet and we had one our best Christmas fun days ever!