Christmas 2016

Since we were driving home from the Kenyon's on Christmas Eve, we didn't do anything special for dinner.  We picked up pizza.  :)

Just us hanging out (the Mejia's were at church I think)

Making notes for Santa

The finished notes - not too wordy this year 

Reading a Christmas story with Dad in their Christmas Eve PJs before bed

Enjoying these candies that bring back memories of Christmas time at Grandma Carlson's

Kimber and her kids got in pretty late.  I was grateful Kaitlyn helped me with the monkey bread prep.

Peter also did a more savory monkey bread

Working hard on food prep for tomorrow

Ready for Santa

Santa got everything out and ready.  Max's pile is on the left with the karaoke machine and Emmalyn's pile was ridiculous with a tramp, puppet show stage, puppets and more

Christmas morning all ready to get out and see if Santa came!

Here's the pile of presents around the tree.  With 11 people in the house, there were a lot of presents!

Maxwell's pile

It's here!

Emmalyn's pile 

The whole room

Emmalyn immediately went for the baby doll

Excited about his new toothbrush

Tyler (all grown up) getting a shave kit

Kait getting grown up girly stuff

New tools from the Mejias

He was really excited about his karaoke machine (and the 80's cd he got because "it has all my favorite songs")

Joe is a hot sauce lover!

Kaitlyn helped put together Emmalyn's stuff for her dolls.  It was great having her help!

New remote control cars

Enjoying yummy monkey bread

Karaoke time!

Focused on singing (all I see is the MESS!)

The regular monkey bread was more popular than the garlic one

Playing with new toys outside

We delivered the final "12 days of Christmas" we had been doing for our next door neighbors - the Rays.  We did it in our pjs.  :) (Notice I still had sunglasses on. My eyes were awful.  I spent a lot of time in bed or sleeping on the couch because it was just so uncomfortable.)

Christmas naps - they are hard to resist

Puppet show!

All the boys had remote control cars

Christmas exhaustion

Emmalyn is exhausted too

Yup, more napping

Hanging out, enjoying presents and being together

We had our traditional potato soup for Christmas dinner.  Always yummy. (even if my kids won't touch soup)

Pre-Christmas trip to see the Kenyons

I had to go to the doctor's because had pink eye... I had the kids and the first opening was like immediately so I didn't have time to get everyone dressed so we went to the doctor's in PJs. (I don't know if I have ever walked out of the house with both kids in PJs!)  We were planning to go down to the Kenyon's that night and I wanted to get on medication ASAP.  I didn't want to miss our trip.

Selfie

Later that day I took the kids to the library.  (I know pink eye is highly contagious but I was a good adult and didn't touch my eye and washed my hands OFTEN.  The doctor said as long as I did that, it was fine.)

That night we drove down to Austin.  The next morning, the kids were super happy to be together. 

Natalie and Maxwell working a video for Natalie's youtube channel

It looks way worse than it felt.  Annoying more than anything.

It was better to just keep glasses on both for those looking at me and so then I didn't have to both trying to look normal.

They just kept getting worse.  I have never had symptoms this bad.  It was pretty much not fun at all.

No pink eye could stop all the fun we had together though!

We HAD to go eat at P Terry's.  :)

Playing dress up at the Kenyon's is so much better than at our house!

So much fun when they get together.

On the way back from the park, it started sprinkling and I slipped on a driveway and came down hard on my knee - it ended up hurting for weeks.

Makenna learning all about prepping a turkey from her dad.  

Max decided to try out the rock climbing wall in their garage.

Rockstar concert with Christmas songs

He did pretty good and tried it a couple times.  I was proud of him for being so brave!

We were only there two nights and then drove home on Christmas Eve.  Even though it was a short visit, I'm really glad we went because it always lifts my spirit to spent time with them.  (I felt bad because 5 days after we left, Makenna came down with pink eye and it took weeks for her to get over it.  I promise that I had been really good about controlling my germs but sadly not enough.  :()

Driving home...