Merry Christmas Eve 2012

I got my best Christmas present the day before Christmas.  Kimberly, Tyler, and Kaitlyn got here early Christmas Eve morning.  (They were troopers and took a red eye flight to get here.)  After they got some sleep, we got busy doing everything we needed to do.

I love my family!

This crazy group headed to Wal-Mart to do some grocery shopping. Kaity and Tyler wore the Santa hats but Peter wouldn't wear the elf hat (are you surprised?).  I am not a party pooper though so I happily wore the hat in public.  :)

We promised the kids we'd go to McDonalds for lunch so we took Max to McDonalds for the first time ever.  (Once every 16 months seems reasonable.)

He ate pickles and french fries.  He wouldn't even touch the apple slices.

Max had fun playing on the playground with his cousins.  They were good to play with him.

Daddy wanted to get in on the fun too.

We had the playground to ourselves nearly the whole time.  (McDonalds apparently is NOT the place to be on Christmas Eve.)

After McDonald's, we dropped all the kids off, including Max, at Brittany's and Peter and I headed back to Wal-Mart to do our traditional stocking shopping for each other and Max.  I was done fast this year.  I can wander the aisles of Wal-Mart for ever and not find anything to buy.  That's how blessed we are - I can't even find "wants" let alone "needs".

That evening, everyone came over to hang at our house.  We were ALL going to sleep at our house tonight (Brittany's family included) so that Santa would just have one house to go to and we could wake up and enjoy Christmas morning together.

I took a picture of this painting because while I like it, I have accepted that I will never take the time to get it framed or hang it up.  So I am going to give it to Goodwill.   I got this during our trip to Mexico.  The local artist painted this with his fingers right in front of me.  It was pretty cool.  But I can't keep things I won't use - my house would be full of crap!

The kids had a blast being crazy together and then watched movies in the media room.

Look - it's a picture with just me and Peter!  That rarely happens anymore.

Nice, Peter.

Kimberly and I prepping the monkey bread for breakfast in the morning.

Poor Kaitlyn, she needs a girl cousin!

Cousin love

Tyler and Kaitlyn wrote notes to Santa that were so cute.  They helped write a note from Hayden too.

The homemade cookies and carrots we left for Santa and Rudolph with the notes.

Peter doing his "Dad" duty and pulling the late night shift for putting a toy together.

Santa visited and I caught a picture of the spread for all the kids.

Max's toys - a slide, a table with chairs, a collapsible tunnel, some cars,  and something else that I can't tell right now or remember - a movie?  a puzzle?.

Max finds a hiding space

It's almost Christmas!  Things are going great and we are enjoying our sweet baby.

I LOVE my bathroom in the morning.  It's full of sunlight.  When the house next to us gets built, we won't get to enjoy as much sun as we do now.  In fact, there's already less sun shining in our window with just a few of the houses that have been built on our street.

Max gave Brittany her present for being such a great babysitter. 

(A pampered chef ground beef spatula thing.)

Big boy enjoying french fries and a little bit of hamburger at In-N-Out.  He liked playing with the stickers.

After lunch we went to JC Penney to do some Christmas/Family portraits.  I tried to plan it perfectly so that we would have a happy Max.  Unfortunately that's not what we got.  Max was so upset and scared.  We didn't get any awesome pictures that I totally love.  Of course I still bought some because that's what I do.

Picture for a new years card.

Oh well, we tried...  This was the first time he freaked out and was scared.  I hope it was just a fluke!

Max sleeping with his blanket.  It's a MUST for bedtime now.  Thanks Aunt Aja for making such a nice present for Max!

Holiday indulgences...

I like Max to do "big kid things" like have his own drink and straw.  I also like him to explore however some things I would prefer that he doesn't learn for now.  :) ...like how to take the lid off his cup!

Good throw, Maxwell!

Max found a new hiding spot - in the cabinets.

Cute little hand peeking through

He'd hold onto one side while he stretched WAY out to grab the door and close it...then after I said "where's Max...where's my Max?..." he'd push the door open and pop his head out and we would do it all over again.

December 22nd was a rough parenting day.  Max has started throwing tantrums.  When he throws his tantrum he collapses to the ground and throws his head against the ground.  So I have to try and slow his momentum in order to protect his head.  So not only were there tantrums but he wouldn't take a nap.  He clearly didn't feel good and wouldn't eat either.  (Of course we tried to make him eat and take a nap which meant there was a struggle on both.)  He was whiny and fussy and NOT HAPPY.  Bad days for Max = bad days for parents.  It's HARD when you don't have a happy kid smiling at you to melt your heart when you are ready to pull your hair out.  It's a good thing we don't have many days like today.  No fun.

The next day, Peter and I went on a wild good chase throughout the house looking for the remote to the projector.  We were tearing the house apart.  Looked in every room, looked in every drawer, looked everywhere we could think to look.  We looked for a half hour straight.  We were so frustrated.  Clearly Max had taken it at some point when we weren't looking and put it somewhere.  So just about when we were ready to give up we were thinking of where we hadn't looked.  I suggested to Peter that we hadn't looked INSIDE the diaper pail.  Just to mark it off our list, Peter was a trooper and opened up the bag of diapers.  Guess what we found?  Yup.  The remote.  Max put it into the top of the diaper pail and flipped the top over causing the remote to fall in with all the diapers.  Gross.  AND do you know what this means for the future?  Max could potentially do this with nearly anything.  We are going to either have to watch him like a hawk OR go through the trash bag of diapers before we throw it out.  UGH.  I love him learning SOME new things but not ALL new things.

It's going to be a fun Christmas season this year!  The weather forecast even says that we might have some snow on Christmas Day!  My fingers are crossed.