Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve was super duper fun for us (as usual)... Want to know why??  Okay.  Let's start off with morning.

We woke up, ate breakfast, and then we decorated our cake for Jesus' birthday.  I let Elaina really have free reign over the cake decorating (more the usual) so the cake is pretty fantastic.  I baked the cake the night before so it was ready for decorating the next morning.

Icing

I did help her write Happy Birthday Jesus on it....

Sprinkles and candy galore...

Finished product - you can't even see the words

Then she cleaned the dishes...with no soap but a good effort.  I appreciated the gesture. 

Next we prepared these rice krispie ornaments that we were going to decorate later at my mom's house.  More to come on that.

After a quick visit to my mammaw and my grandma that day, we headed to church with my mom.  This is a post church family pose at my mom's house

Elaina in her Christmas outfit

Lil E with dad

And one with mom

After dinner we started with presents. My mom likes to play this game where everyone draws a word from a hat. Then, Gale reads The Night Before Christmas and when your word gets spoken you call out. You then get to pick an envelope from a basket that has a gift card to somewhere in it. The next person can take a gift card already opened or pick a new one... you know, dirty Santa of sorts. It's super fun. 

Here is Elaina sitting with Kate awaiting her word to be said.  She got "Happy Christmas" so her word was last.  But, she waited very patiently

Still waiting on her word, now in my lap

Gale reading The Night Before Christmas

Next, we decorated the rice krispie treats like ornaments.

Alexandra and Elaina

Some of the finished products...

Then we opened our stocking stuffers....  Elaina's favorite gift (probably of ALL the gifts she got were these Ariel pajamas)

Next we headed home to get to bed for Santa's arrival..... 

The loot

Bike... super exciting

Here is a cute video of Elaina getting ready for Santa.

Here is the reindeer eating the food she left.  He hovered beside the door for an hour until we let him outside.  He was happy to eat it all.

Let The Christmas blogging begin

We hope everyone had a very Merry Christmas.  We sure did.  Christmas Day was a bit exhausting but totally worth it - we had fun with family and enjoyed spending Christmas Eve and Day with them.  We crashed when we got home, that is for sure.
The first post I will dedicate to our second annual Gingerbread decorating party with our friends, the Fords.  We  had such a good time doing this last year that we had to do it again this year.  The Fords just welcomed their third child, Elias James.  He is so precious.  Because of his arrival a few weeks ago we had to put the gingerbread making off closer to Christmas but we are able to squeeze it in just before and were glad.  These first few pictures are some of Elias....

This is a picture of me holding him when he was a couple of days old as Elaina looks on

Elaina held him - this is the first baby she has ever held.  She's never really been into holding babies but after she saw Olivia do it, she had to join in.

This is me and Elias the other day when we did Gingerbread houses.  He is already so much bigger

Silly husbands.....  All ready for Santa Claus

 Now, onto gingerbread house decorating...

Getting ready...

Elaina and Olivia are old pros at this

Erik is an "old" pro too :)

The kids put a on a performance for us...  Isaac's outfit reflected in the flash

And the finished products

Don't you love the stick figure on the left.... I do.

This was super fun again this year.....  Thanks again to the Fords - can't wait until year #3.

More Christmas Eve and Day Festivities to come..... 

Breakfast with Santa

This past Saturday we went to Lakeside Tavern to eat Breakfast with Santa.  We had a great time together as family.  It was put on for charity - Mission of Hope - and, needless to say, Santa was there.  We ate some delicious pancakes and sausage and saw Santa.  Note, I only said "saw" Santa.  Elaina wanted nothing more then to watch him from afar.  Oh well, it was still a good time together as family.  I recommend this to anyone with kids.  It was a nice quiet setting to visit with Santa and was nicely set up.

A pose in the booth before Santa got there

What else do you do when you are waiting on Santa but to take a picture of your half eaten plate of food.  I took this, not Elaina :)

Our booth was literally right beside where Santa sat. 

Outside waiting on Santa to arrive

And, Santa showed up in a Fire Truck, of course!  ??

Family pose - as you can tell Elaina is freaked out because she just saw Santa

Now it's my turn to pose with Elaina

She sat and watched all the kids sit on Santa's lap

I took her to get in line - this is me talking it up for her to sit in his lap.  She was having none of it.  Oh well, not the end of the world.  She did still have fun watching all the other kids sit in his lap

Ornaments

Each year since Elaina was born, we have gotten a family ornament that is personalized....  They are hands down my most favorite ornaments and I love going each year to pick them out.  We just picked up our 2011 family ornament yesterday so I thought I'd post a blog about it and show you the ornaments of years past....

2007

2008

2009 - the year is written on the bottom of this one but you can't really see it

2010

And 2011... Elaina picked this one out.  This is the first year she has been with us to pick them out.  She was very much into it

I love them all and the memories they each have with it.  My favorite so far is 2010.  Your favorite??