Christmas

This Christmas season was simply magical.  Every holiday seems to get better and better.  I've heard my kids say over and over "this is the best Christmas EVER!!"  I don't know if there is anything better to be heard out of your child's mouth!  We tried to do many fun things to celebrate this Christmas season.  It felt busy and over whelming at times, but the kids loved every minute of it.  We took the kids to see the lights at Thanksgiving Point.  They enjoyed driving though that light show.  We spent many evenings driving around neighborhoods looking at cool houses with awesome light displays.  Anything with cool lights the kids just loved.

On Christmas Eve, we took the kids out to the movies.  They loved it.  They absolutely love popcorn and going to the big theater.  Clara doesn't have quite the attention span that Luke has, but it is still a fun experience for them.

We also spent lots of time playing in the snow.  In the days leading up to Christmas, thankfully we had lots of fresh powder to play in.  It actually rained on Christmas Eve and Christmas day, but before that there were lots of opportunities for the kids to play in fresh snow.  They loved every minute of it.  We took them sledding and made a small hill in our front yard for them to slide down.  They rolled around and just laid in the snow like it was the best thing ever.  It wasn't super sticky snow, so it didn't make for building snow men very well, but we were able to build a very small snow man.  Playing in the snow was definitely a major highlight for these two kiddos!

We also made time for crafts on Christmas eve.  We had to make our Gingerbread houses.  We didn't make real gingerbread houses, we made crafty ones with lots of stickers. The kids loved the stickers, and again it was perfect.  Did I mention this holiday was perfect?

For Christmas Eve, we spent a lovely evening having dinner with some family friends, and then put the kids to bed.  The kids didn't quite understand the excitement of it all.  We stayed up putting out gifts from Santa and wrapping a few last presents.  I had difficulty sleeping because I was so excited for my kids' eyes when they saw what Santa had brought them.  It was a first for us.  Not being able to sleep on Christmas eve.  I woke up several times through the night in pure excitement for the morning.  Not excited for my presents, but for my kids' presents.  It was our first Christmas at our own home, and it was so magical.

Clara woke up first, and it was business as usual.  We tried to tell her it was Christmas morning, but since she really didn't remember the year prior, she didn't understand the excitement she should be experiencing.  We told her to go wake up Luke, and he was not happy about that.  He told her to go away!  Luke said he wasn't done sleeping yet, but after we explained to him that Santa had come, he happily came out of his room to see what was going on.  From there, it was pure joy!

The kids ripped through their gifts pretty quickly.  They wanted to play with everything right away.  The house was a disaster of wrapping paper and toy parts.  They got chocolates in their stockings which they started devouring right away too.

For some reason the kids just love bandaids, so the kids each got a couple boxes of bandaids, and Clara started putting baidaids on everything.  It was present over load.  They happily played with their toys all morning.  

Later Christmas Day, we headed to Idaho to spend the rest of the week with family.  Our trip to Idaho was also lots of fun.  The kids are always spoiled by grandma and grandpa!  Plus its fun to play with cousins!