Christmas Day - Last One I swear!

We had a wonderful Christmas morning with the boys! They were so excited to open their gifts and have pigs in a blanket and snuggle and watch the Christmas parade on TV. 

Later that morning, we headed to Nana and Papa's house to spend the day with them! We had some great dinner, opened gifts, and played all afternoon with their new toys! The boys were, once again, spoiled with so many great toys, and wanted to open them all right then! 

He's about to blink, but I wanted to post the pic anyway

Helping Papa open a gift

Crew with Great Grandpa Ozzie

We love the holidays and are sad that they are over, but we have some great memories to last us until next year!

Can we Freeze Time this Xmas Eve?

No seriously...I can't take it! Can everyone stay the exact age they are right now and just re-live this wonderful season every day of the week? I am loving the ages of Gav and Crew way too much right now, and their innocence on their faces and pure joy at all the fun things we've done.

Christmas Eve night at our house is something Eric feels so strongly about being just US, and no plans or interruptions. We get jammies on and watch Christmas movies, have hot chocolate and they get to open one gift. That gift just so happened to be some character pajamas with matching house shoes. I am such a picture taker so I tried really hard to get some good pics in front of the tree, and at first, Gavin didn't want to be in them. So Crew did a solo shoot! 

But when his brother joined him, you can just see the happiness on little Crew Bear's face. He lives for his brother...

 Crew 20 months, Lexi 9 1/2 years old, Gavin 3 yrs 1 month 

Christmas Eve Fun!

Christmas Eve morning, I decided that we needed to make Christmas cookies ONE MORE TIME before the big day! Every time we made them over the past week we kept eating them all rather than saving any for Santa. So I invited Megan and Kyler, Steph and Memphis, and Liz and Liam over to join the fun! The younger two pretty much just ate cookies, but Gavin, Kyler and Liam all took their cookie decorating seriously. It was so cute to see how excited they were to make the ones for Santa

Then in the afternoon, we went over to the Blackburn's house to have Christmas with my dad. I guess it was craziness bc I have almost no pics of that entire afternoon. But we all had a great day. The kids got so many fun toys to play with, and we all had fun trying them out together. 

Love this pic! 

Christmas with our Families

Im so behind on Xmas posts, so we're gonna recap concisely!

A few days before Christmas, we got together with Mom and Bill, the Blackburns, Higgins, and Grandma, Grandpa, and Aunt Sharon. We were quite the crew! We decorated Christmas cookies, ate lots of great mexican food, and even listened to music played by Great Grandpa and Cindy. The kids had a blast and were so spoiled as always!

Moms old tree with all our ornaments from growing up

Backup Guitar players!

My beautiful mommy

Hailey, Reagan, Crew, and Gavin with Aunt Sharon

With GG and GG-Pa

Tommy the Elf 2nd Season

Tommy the Elf returned for his 2nd year this December, and it was so much fun watching Gavin search for him and talk about him all throughout the holidays! Some days Tommy just hung out in a random place in the house, but other days Tommy actually got a little creative! 

Eating Xmas candy

Left the kids a donut breakfast!

Elf Angels

Hot Cocoa date with new mugs!

On his last morning with us, he brought the boys some breakfast again and decorated the table. He let the boys know they were great this year and he would be telling Santa this! Gavin was so excited! 

Until next year Tommy! 

Fun Christmassy Things!

We've done so many fun Christmassy things this December, and all of us have enjoyed it so much! We started with decorating the tree together as a family. Crew only wanted to throw the ornaments off the tree, so he was quickly banned from tree decorating. But Gavin was a great help! He took it very seriously and wanted to make sure we got all the ornaments on the tree in the right spot! It was precious

 We also did an Advent Calendar this year. The boys might be a little young for this, but we had some fun things on the agenda and some crafty things as well. We got the boys their own Christmas tree upstairs that they could decorate and pick out their own ornaments. They had fun with that. One of the advent calendars days was spent shopping for toys and clothes for a little boy and his family who don't get presents all the time. This one really stuck with Gavin. He kept talking about this boy, and even got to pick out the toy for him, and helped me wrap it. I think it really stuck with him bc he wanted the toy for himself so bad, but I was happy that he kept graciously understanding, at age 3, that this toy was for someone less fortunate.

We got some Starbucks hot chocolate one day on the way to school, and even went to Chickasha again with the Bakers to look at lights. It was so freezing that night, so we spent very little time outside before we retreated to the car to drive through the lights with some heat.

The boys had a great visit with Santa this year. Neither of them were scared or cried when we put them on his lap. It was so sweet! 

And we did lots of Christmas movie nights. The boys loved Polar Express, and barely moved or made a peep through the entire thing! They also really loved the "Elf on the Shelf" movie, Shrek the Halls, and the Grinch. 

 

Sister pic from Amy's Birthday party night! 

It's the most Wonderful time of the year!