Happy New Year!!!!
Things are slowly but surely getting back to normal at our house and I could not be happier about it! As much as I LOVE and anticipate the Christmas season and all the fun, food, no schedules, and (of course) time with our precious family, there is something about the calm and clean of January that makes me all kinds of motivated and excited.
I still need to take down Christmas though, ha!
I will hopefully do that today.
I probably do not have much time before one of my children waddles in here and asks for milk so I will do my best to recap as much of Christmas as I can!
(And sure enough as I was uploading these photos the first waddler appeared! Hayes is our early riser, FYI.)
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On Christmas morning, Parker climbed in our bed at 6am to tell us that Santa had come!! He was obviously excited but agreed to wait until Hayes woke up and laid with us till about 6:30. (This was not ideal as we didn't get in bed until around 4! Being a good elf is hard, y'all.)
The kids we SO excited and as Bryan and I lounged on the couch half-asleep, I couldn't help but get emotional that this time is going by so quickly! We are in such a sweet spot right now.
Parker was head over heels for his new Lego sets and "Really Rad Robot", Lily loved her new kitchen, and Hayes seemed happy with his gifts (he got a "new to him" used Wii system and sport game) but mostly just wanted to play with Parker's robot.... ;)
And as promised--my finished Christmas Star Bread! Isn't she pretty?
We enjoyed my bread masterpiece with my mother-in-laws sausage balls and copious amount of coffee.
Bryan and I tried to dose on the couch but mostly opened/assembled/put batteries in everything while the kids played.
I don't have many photos but I do have a ton of video of Christmas morning--hopefully I can get that on YouTube today!
The kids BIG gift that Santa brought for their scavenger hunt was a trampoline! We have a very nice and HUGE back yard with not a lot to do but run around (which is good but apparently gets "boring" quickly), so the trampoline was a welcome addition!
We spent all day in our jammies (Parker's request) while playing with new toys and watching "A Christmas Story" (it was all awesome and perfect).....then we got ready for a FEAST fit for a (newborn) King! ;)
I bought some traditional poppers which were the kids' favorite part of dinner.
My favorite part of dinner was undoubtedly THE FOOD. We made steak, my Mom's green beans, homemade mac and cheese (that tasted better than it looked), lemon rolls, and a Pappasito's copycat of bacon-wrapped shrimp with Mexican butter that was DIVINE.
And then I gained 15 pounds.
After dinner, we opened MORE gifts from Nonnie and Pops, (which included a Face Time call), raced cars in the street (I have no photos of any of this--bad blog mom!), and drove out to look at Christmas lights.
Hayes was asleep before we even got to the first neighborhood but the rest of us had a wonderful time enjoying the lights and the last few hours of Christmas music (SOB!)
Parker sat in my lap in the front seat and let me snuggle him which rarely happens. A wonderful Christmas gift to me!
It was a perfect, relaxing (yet at the same time exhausting?) Christmas Day and I wouldn't change a bit of it.
And then the "I don't know what day it is and there are NO RULES week" began!
I laughed hard at this:
We spent the next few days basically doing more of our Christmas Day activities: staying in our jammies, eating a lot of food, playing with new toys, and watching Christmas movies.
And it was all awesome, amen.
Bryan and the boys got out of the house and went to see "Bumblebee".
Parker (our card game lover) got UNO in his stocking and Bryan and I LOVED getting to play with him. Quite the card shark, I tell you!
Lily treated her Dad to some home-cooking.
Our supposed-to-be formal dining room has turned into Lily's play house and I kind of love it.
Aaaaaand we made gingerbread houses. I am not a fan of the gingerbread house business (purely because it is messy and never looks like the examples on the box), but the boys both L-O-V-E it so I couldn't pass it up.
After our week at home and all the Christmas crazy I was feeling a bit like this!
(Always, really.)
Taking screen shots of funny memes is one of my favorite hobbies, obviously.
Our last big Christmas adventure of the week was a trip to the Gaylord Texan to see all the lights and let me tell you, it was every bit as pretty as I hoped it would be.
(And the photos do not do it a lick of justice, as usual.)
The kids loved looking at the toy trains, fountains, and the gigantic gingerbread house.
If all my children calmly standing on a fence looking at all the Christmas things isn't cute, I don't know what is.
We let the kids pick one treat from the sundry shop and continued our jaunt around the atrium. It was all so pretty!
The Notre Dame players were staying at the Gaylord for the Cotton Bowl and it was fun to see all the ND stuff around the hotel.
Next year we will for sure come back and eat at one of the restaurants and do the snow tubing. (I was worried it would be too busy but it wasn't!) It was so fun and definitely earned a spot as a Christmastime tradition!
....And then we went home, crashed, and woke up to PACK and head to our dear, sweet Lubbock.
More later!
