We were able to take a nice, long Christmas vacation this year thanks to Josh's school schedule. We are trying to take advantage of these school breaks while he is still in school, because once he's working in the real world, we won't have quite as much freedom!
We headed up to Boise first to spend a day at my sister's and break up the trip. Reece had a great time playing dress up with Carter and Andi.
We headed up to my K-Town on Saturday, and it was a looooooong day. Yucky roads and flat tires on two of the three cars in our caravan (seriously?!?!) and we finally made it in just under 11 hours. It should have taken 7! But the kids all survived, and we were happy to have made it there safely.
We headed to my parent's ward the next day in our Christmas duds.
Reece, Remi, Taytum, and Andi in their Christmas dresses.
The rest of the week leading up to Christmas was spent bustling around, and enjoying the chaos of all the kiddos under the same roof!
Every nite, my parents would take all of the kids (that's 9 kids, ages 4 and under!) up into the bonus room to read a story to them and give them a little gift. It was a fun and exciting thing for the kids to look forward to every nite, and they loved getting all of their little gifts! I'm pretty sure that Reece has slept with her giant Smurf stuffed animal every nite since, and her princess 'lips' are always close by during the day. It was also quite nice for the adults to have 5 minutes, kid free, every evening! And I have to say my parents are troopers for taking the Remster every nite; poor girl was working on her two front teeth all week long and didn't really care to be detached from me!
My mom did her third Sounds of the Seasons concert at the local theater. She is truly an amazingly talented lady, and I was so proud to be there that nite. She had over 500 people there for her free holiday concert. On top of playing the piano and singing, she also baked cookies and made wassail for all of those people! I love that she does this, and love that my dad is so supportive of her sharing her talents with the community. My parents are pretty much awesome.
It was Nic's birthday while we were there, so my parents offered to hold the fort down so that all of the sibs and spouses could go bowling to celebrate. I started out doing great, but slowly went downhill as the evening wore on! It was fun to watch some of the crazy things the boys were doing. It was a lot of fun!
Friday was finally Christmas Eve! The kids' excitement was palpable! We started off the day with popcorn and soda. What? That's normal for our family! My parents rented the movie theater for us, as well as some of their friends, for a private viewing of Tangled. Everyone also got their own soda and little cup of popcorn. The kids were in heaven, and we all thought it was one of the cutest movies we've ever seen. It's a new favorite in our house!
When we got home from the movie, we had a special visitor: SANTA! He knew a little something about each of the kids. Reece still wouldn't sit on his lap, but she at least stood by him. I think you can tell how Remi felt from the picture.
We managed to get a picture of almost all the kids with Santa at the end. The kids (well, most of them) felt so special!
Once Santa had left, it was time to get going on the presents. The kids had been so patient all day long! We let them open up their gifts from the cousin exchange. We had the kiddos sit on the rug whenever we needed to contain them, and it was a great way to get them settled when it was time to do something. The girls made out with some great gifts!
We set the table and the counter for our traditional Christmas Eve dinner. Us girls enjoyed getting crafty and creative to make the table look so pretty. The kids even got some special treatment for their meal. We were never able to get a good picture of everyone at the table due to some things that came up during dinner (like Reece throwing up - awesome) but we all were able to enjoy some good food!
After dinner, the kids all opened up a book and their Christmas jammies from my parents. I absolutely love the ruffles on the pink jammies that Reece, Andi (and Taytum) got.
Here are the three babies in their jammies....
and their naughty little bums! Too cute!
We opted for a bit more innocent and sweet nativity this year. My dad read the story while my mom helped the kids do a flannel board story. Each kid got to put up a few pieces throughout the story. It was a great way to get them involved, and it was the quietest they were all day!
After we got the kids down, the grown ups were able to open presents from our gift exchange, as well as our Christmas jammies. My mom MADE all of us pajama pants! (Remember how she did that concert and made all those cookies? Yeah, she made 12 pairs of pajama pants on top of all that!) For some reason, we didn't get a picture of all of us in them, but they are great! We also had matching Christmas shirts, too. I love this tradition!
Then it was time for all of us to play Santa for our kiddos. We stuffed stockings - I'm pretty sure my parents got a kick out of watching us put stuff in, take it out, and try again to get it all to fit! Eventually we'll get it down to an art like they do!
Christmas morning was a blast! The kids had so much fun going through their stockings, and opening up gifts from Santa. They, along with us, were all completely spoiled by my parents! We also enjoyed our traditional breakfast of bran muffins, orange slices, and bacon. Yum! Another great tradition!
What a fabulous Christmas!
