Christmas 2011

Yes, I am well aware that Christmas was a couple of weeks ago, but I am just now getting around to posting some Christmas pics. Christmas Eve was much quieter this year than it usually is. We always get together with my family on Christmas Eve and with a total of 13 kids (plus 2 more on the way!) between us, it is always a fun night with a lot of chaos. This year was certainly still fun, but not nearly so chaotic because 8 of the 13 cousins weren't there. Two of my three sisters and their families weren't there, so it was much quieter than usual. Have I mentioned how much I truly hate that we are not all together anymore? I do.

But, we still had a great time. My parents gave Jake a Lego set, which is always a hit. He could hardly rip into the box and get it put together fast enough. Addi got the Josefina American Girl doll from them. She has started getting into American Girl lately and has been wanting one of the dolls, but spending $100 on a doll is just not something that we were willing to do. So, instead, I bought a used one from Craigslist for half the price, and Addi doesn't know the difference. The doll was going to be Addi's present from us, but my mom needed an idea, so it became her present from my parents instead. She LOVES her and takes her everywhere.

Then, Christmas morning started with our treasure hunt for Jesus that the kids really love doing. I tried to make the clues a little trickier this year so that "following the star" to find Jesus would be a little more challenging. We then ate a little birthday cake and finished reading our Jesse Tree book and the story of Christ's birth, and talked about what we were doing for Jesus for His birthday. Then, we headed out to deliver Christmas goodies to a few random families. We love this Christmas tradition that we started a few years ago and love that it helps the kids to focus on others first. We stayed close to home this year and delivered to a couple of neighbors that we don't really know and another family up the street that just had a baby (their 7th!).

On our way to deliver treats

Jake and Addi take turns, with one of them setting the goodies at the door and one of them ringing the bell, and then they both run and hide.

When we returned from that, it was Jake and Addi's turn to open their presents. First, they opened the presents that they had gotten each other. Jake picked out (on his own) an American Girl sewing project for Addi (so, in other words, a sewing project for me), and Addi got Jake a 5-in-1 survival tool, which he thought was pretty much the coolest thing ever. This thing is a serious tool with an ax, saw, hammer, etc. and Jake loved it. He spent the next couple of hours playing with that (he took it outside and chopped down a small tree in our front yard with it) and his new legos, while Addi played with her doll. Jay and I also got to open our presents from the kids. I got a new pair of flip flops and we each got some sort of craft that they had made.

Our neighbor, Jack, helped Jake to cut down the tree. I bought Jack the same survival tool that Addi gave Jake, so the two of them worked together. I don't think that his parents were too thrilled with my choice of a present though. They thought it was a little dangerous. Oops!

Jake would have been perfectly content playing with his tool and doing nothing else for the rest of the day, but Addi requested to move on. So, they then opened their present from Nana and Papa. Addi got an outfit for Josefina (if you know Addi, you know that she changes clothes about 10 times a day, so she is thrilled to have changes of clothes for Josefina as well) and the entire set of Josefina books. Addi has gotten to be such a good reader that she reads them to me sometimes instead of me reading them to her. Needless to say, she loved her gifts from Jay's parents and then spent the next part of the day playing with Josefina some more, changing her clothes, etc. She did that while Jake tried out his present from Jay's parents, which was a really cool Nerf bow and arrow that he loved. He set up target practice and was actually really good at shooting it. They then spent the next couple of hours playing with those things.

It was probably early afternoon sometime when I suggested that they open their present from us. They would have been perfectly happy to just keep playing with the things they were playing with, but I was excited to give them what we had gotten them. We got Jake a Red Ryder BB gun (that came with some very strict rules), and got Addi a weaving loom, which also goes along with the Josefina theme. (Josefina learns to weave blankets in the stories.) The goal will be for us to work together to actually learn how to use the loom and to make a blanket for Josefina. So really, it's a present that created more work for me. Not sure what I was thinking on that one. We knew that Jake would be ecstatic about the bb gun, and he was. As you can imagine, the rest of the day (and pretty much every day since) was spent alternating between various weapons and legos for Jake and in a make-believe doll world for Addi.

Poor little Tate got nothing...not even a picture taken. I take that back, he did get some cute clothes from Jay's parents and from Jay's aunt and uncle. And I always have some cute pictures of Taters...