Christmas Eve

Every year we head to Mrs. Charlotte’s house first thing in the morning on the 24th. We stay there all day and spend the night, spending Christmas morning together. When I first entered the family I thought it was a super odd tradition to ALL spend the night at Mrs. Charlotte’s like that. But I’ve adjusted to it and we have found a great balance of big family time as well as carving out our own little traditions for our own family to enjoy together 🙂

Britt took her nap at 9:00 and we got going on the fun! Mrs. Charlotte found these fun gingerbread cookies for the kids to decorate so we did that first.

Since the frosting looked pretty intense with food coloring, all the kids went shirtless 😉

Always trying to outshine us all!

I love all of these with G-Mama!

Don’t Kye and Mrs Charlotte look a lot alike here?!?!

After Britt woke from her nap we headed over to Little Mama’s and Big Daddy’s house for lunch!

The older kids all played and had fun and I focused on keeping Britt entertained. I’m READY for Casey and Jordan to bust out some kids for Britt to have a friend 🙂 I’m sure once they get older though that she and Payton will be close. 2ish years apart isn’t very many, just when they are little! Britt had a great time with all the toys and especially climbing up and down Big Daddy and Little Mama’s step…here’s a video!

It was a nice, casual lunch and we had some extra time so I thought it was a great opportunity to get some pictures! How blessed are our children to have such great bonds with their great grandparents???

This is SUCH a good picture!

Can’t forget Brad 🙂

Little Mama was so sweet with Britt

After lunch we put the kids down early for naps so we could head out for the football game. Once they woke up from naps we didn’t really have anything planned to entertain them…we decided that next year each of us could be in charge of an activity! Courtney was thinking she’d being some kind of ornament for them to decorate, I like the idea of decorating some plates or something, and Casey was thinking she could bring stuff to have a treasure hunt. With preschoolers they get bored kinda fast and need more activities to keep them going!

Britt was totally happy just playing with toys all afternoon 🙂

The big kids ended up watching a movie simply because we couldn’t come up with anything else for them to do!

Jordan is seriously SO sweet with our children…gonna be a good daddy!

We thought it’d be fun to write letters to Santa

Our family letter!

Reading a book while waiting on dinner to finish up

Mr. Rusty (aka Mr Technology…) found an app on his Ipad where we could track Santa around the world! It provided a couple minutes of entertainment 😉

Bath Time

(I promise the water was clean…strange brown tint though?)

Girls!

Haha Casey’s always posin’

Bath time was quick…splashing got pretty out of hand fast!

I opted not to put Britt in her Christmas pjs…I was too scared she’d leak through her diaper or something in the night!

After baths each child had a little cup of hot cocoa to drink while Mrs. Charlotte read The Night Before Christmas

Check out ALL the stockings!

While reading the book we heard Santa’s sleigh bells!!! They sounded very close so we knew we had to hurry!!! I think it’s HILARIOUS how Kye doesn’t even react…he was too focused on his cocoa 😉

One more check on Santa’s progress

Before going to bed we had to get our Santa cookies set up and put out our magic reindeer food!

Kye was so sweet to let his cousins share!

Our cookies, some milk, and ALL the letters!

We put Britt to bed but let the older kids watch Frosty The Snowman together before getting tucked in

This is what happens when I leave my camera unattended 😉

Once the kids were down for the night we got busy with our traditional gingerbread house decorating competition. This year the houses weren’t already assembled…it took us FOREVER just to get them together. And some of us never could have it happen 😉

At least the frosting tasted good haha

My poor house

Courtney, duh, had hers together in no time

Enjoying quality time with my husband!

My finished product 😉

It was Jordan’s first year with us and it was HILARIOUS watching him trying to put together his house. He and Zach are SO competitive and take everything SO seriously so he was getting mega annoyed about it. Which made it even funnier!

“Land Here” clever!

I thought my little tree and sunshine was cute…no one else agreed 🙁

Yay! Jordan’s stayed together for a few minutes!

Casey’s

Jolee’s!

Jordans hahahaha

Zach annoys us all b/c his is always PERFECT

Time to do the judging!

Last place! Better get used to it bud!

Mr. Rusty was worn out from the football game or something b/c he skipped 4th place and told me and Trey that we tied for 3rd

Courtney, aka Golden Child, got second

3 years in a row for Zach as the winner

And somehow Casey also tied for 3rd? with Jolee…so like 4 of us got 3rd place haha

We all drank hot chocolate and had some good laughs before getting in the bed. I was OUT of it for some reason that day. Like I was SO exhausted!!! Zach and I decided I must have been sick and my body was just fighting it or something?!?! I was ready to get in the bed when the kids went down but held out to hang out with everyone. We still got to sleep at a decent time but Zach and I slept TERRIBLE that night. I guess we are getting picky about how we sleep? We couldn’t get comfortable…hearing Kye in the room with us kept waking us up…my back and foot were hurting….it was a mess of a night! We decided next year we’re gonna have to take some sleeping pills or something!!!

This year they put their Christmas tree in the foyer to allow for more space in the living room. The foyer was literally OVERFLOWING with presents!!!!