Christmas craziness!

We had a great Christmas!  I took a ton of pictures and finally have gotten around to posting them.  Here's some of the things we did, decorations we put up, and presents we received.

The kids with their letters to Santa

Making gingerbread houses

Decorating the tree

Our pitiful little tree, decorated mostly with crafts the kids have made with the valuable, breakable, ones on the very top.  This is a 6 ft prelit tree that we got a few years ago and when we plugged it in this year, only about half of the lights worked.  Well, after another week or two another 1/3 went out and then only the ones on the top front area worked.  On Christmas Day the last few went out, barely making it through Christmas Eve and the magic of Christmas morning. Whew!  I went out and got a new, much nicer 7 1/2 ft tree for half off the next day to use for next year!

Abbie's countdown chain she made in school, she loved taking one off each day

My little hot cocoa mix-in jars, the kids loved snitching marshmallows and M&M's all month long

The stockings were hung up high this year so Porter wouldn't pull the heavy iron holders down onto himself

My olive wood nativity set that I got in Jerusalem almost 13 years ago.  I can't believe it's been that long!

My little angel and sheep ready to act out the nativity on Christmas Eve

Two sweet angels

All the cousins dressed up for their parts

We even got a personal vist from Grandpa, I mean Santa!

Putting out cookies on Christmas Eve

So, there's a long story to the next two pictures.  You know that message from Santa video (from this website) that was going around right before Christmas, the one where you could put your child's name and info into and then it would make a personalized video for your child, just for them from Santa?  Well, on Christmas Eve day I decided to make them and show them to the girls and in the one I made for Abbie, I said that she wanted Legos because that was the only thing I could think of that she actually said she wanted that we had gotten for her.  Well, when she watched the video, she got all concerned at that part and said "I didn't ask for Legos, I asked for princess bath toys!"  Then she started to say something like "Well, maybe Santa will get me Legos too but I know he's going to bring me the bath toys, that's what I wrote him in my letter and when I sat on his lap, etc....."  Well, I had heard her say that before but I thought she just meant princess bath soaps or water squirters or wash cloths or something like that, which we already had.  Feeling curious and a little guilty that I didn't even know what my child wanted for Christmas, I started searching on Amazon for "princess bath toys" and some different things popped up so I asked her what it was exactly that she wanted.  The picture below was it!

Well, I had never seen that in the stores and here it was Christmas Eve so I wasn't even sure how I was going to find them in time but being the great mom that I am, I started doing some research online, narrowed it down to a couple different stores, and then went on the hunt.  I found the Ariel and Sleeping Beauty princesses at the first store I went to but nothing else so I figured they were better than nothing and got them.  Then at another store I found Beauty but couldn't find any others. I knew Abbie's favorite princess is Cinderella and I for sure had to get that one but I was running out of time and needed to get back home.  Luckily, these bath princesses look very similar to the ballerina princess dolls so I ended out getting the ballerina Cinderella and a blue loofah and I figured I could make the skirt myself.  So late at night on Christmas Eve I found myself taking the back off the Cinderella packaging, putting on her little homemade loofah skirt, and then with Jared's help, we taped them all together to a piece of cardboard to make it look like they all went together (and so it would be a bigger wrapped present to open in the morning).  I had never done anything so last minute or crazy, just to please a child, but I didn't want her to lose her faith in Santa just yet, and it really did seem like it would be the end of the world if she didn't get that present in the morning.  Here's our final product, pretty similar, right?

Here is Abbie Christmas morning, she loved it!  We made her wait until the very end to open it and she just kept saying, "I knew Santa would bring me this, it's just what I wanted!"  Seeing her face and hearing those words made it all worth it.  The things we do for our children!

Here's everything set out on Christmas Eve

The girls with their new dresses and matching dresses for their dolls

Porter with some new cars.  He loves cars so much that that's pretty much all we got him, that and some building blocks that he hardly ever touches.  He is all into cars, trucks, anything with wheels right now!

Leah with all her presents.  She was happy to get anything and didn't really ask for one certain thing in particular so she was easy to please this year. 

Abbie with her other gifts.  She also loved the Hello Kitty journal that I got her.  I had one like it when I was a kid and remember really loving it so I got it for her, mostly for sentimental reasons, and she loved it.  She likes writing her secrets in it and locking it up so Leah and Porter won't read it.  I guess she doesn't realize that they can't read yet anyway!  It's probably good to get into the habit, though, for the future.  I know I had a few snoopy siblings that probably read my journals!

Playing with the infamous "princess bath toys"!

It ended out that the kids loved the Legos too!  I had gotten two big boxes of them for a great deal on Black Friday and then it was Jared's idea to combine them all together in a big bin for easy sorting and finding.  The girls and Jared played with these for hours on Christmas Day.

The house that Abbie made, just copying the picture on the box.  She has gotten pretty good at making things and spends hours doing Legos now.  I never quite got into them and don't really have the 3D building skills that it takes to make something, just from seeing a picture of it.

This is just a random picture of Porter from New Year's Eve, a few days later, when we went to Grandpa's house to celebrate.  He loved the never-ending supply of popcorn that Grandpa had and probably ate more in that evening than he's ever had in the rest of his life combined.  I'm surprised he didn't get sick.  He did drink a lot of water that night and the next day, though!

The final picture of the season.  We got a great family picture taken at our ward party for free and it ended out being the picture I used for our Christmas card and everything.  I can't believe how big our kids are getting and that we have 3 (and a half) already! 

Whew, well that's pretty much sums up our holiday season, I hope yours was just as wonderful!