Christmas Break Recap Part One!

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!

Christmas Eve.

We had a very fun, relaxing Christmas doing all the best things and will continue doing them with our friends and family for the next week! I absolutely love Christmas break. 

I thought I would share a few memories from Christmas Eve in today's post. Christmas Eve is maybe more of a favorite for me than Christmas Day. I just love the anticipation, the prep, and getting to go to candle light service all dressed up. It's the best. 

Lilybug started out merry and bright in her outfit for the day. She loves that reindeer on her shirt and shows it to everyone she sees when she wears it.

The boys spent most of the morning coloring.

And I spent most of the morning food prepping! I was thankfully feeling much better post-stomach bug and busted out some ham and poppyseed rolls for lunch as well as frosting for our Santa sugar cookies for--with my Rockettes DVD playing in the background, duh!

The boys were big fans of the frosting-covered beaters.

My kitchen was looking like a hot mess, as it usually does when I make more than one thing at a time. I think I am the messiest cook I know! It's kind of lame since I am such a clean freak.

After lunch, Bryan took the boys to the park to run out some of their never-ending energy while I cleaned up. I was able to listen to my favorite Christmas songs in peace and got all weepy as I cleaned---there is just something about Christmas Eve that brings it out of me! ("Welcome to Our World" by Chris Rice and "Joseph's Lullaby" by Mercy Me are my main tear jerkers.) Once the boys returned we turned on some "fun" Christmas music and got busy decorating cookies.

All three kids were super into the whole process and it was so cute. Also relatively drama-free, which  was nice!

Parker and his sweet smirk showing off his almost-as-sweet train cookies.

Lily was mostly into touching/licking everything.

And Haysie was just so proud of himself and his decorating abilities. I just can't with that smile!

Don't our cookies look SO delicious? ;)

Later in the evening we got dressed and went to my very favorite part of Christmas: candle light service! Hayes was so excited to participate this year and hold his own candle. He did a great job except for the part where Lily leaned back over his candle and singed her hair. Yes. That happened. (But not Haysie's fault!) No real harm done on those pretty curls, by the way.

I always get choked up when I think about all the candles being lit around the world on Christmas Eve. Visual examples of what we are supposed to be in this world! I'm so corny right now!

During the last song, (which was a very upbeat version of "Joy to the World"), we got the BIG surprise of snow falling all around the auditorium! It was so cool and I was just as excited as the kids were. 

Here is a not so awesome shot of the snow magic:

And here is my cute little family who we managed to wrangle in for a decent photo.

After service was over, we headed to Uncle Julio's for dinner (can you tell this is our new favorite Mexican restaurant). It was delicious and full and happy and I've only got this horrible picture as proof:

We listened to the kids' FAVORITE Christmas songs (which also happen to be my least favorite!) on the way home---it's all Trans-Siberian Orchestra, and y'all, I can only take so much of it. 

After we got home, we got on our jammies and let the kids open the presents that they bought each other which they were all very excited about and provided a good hour of entertainment.

Hayes got Parker a Lego set, Parker got Lily a car seat for her baby doll, and Lily got Hayes a game.

We Facetimed the grandparents and then got our Santa supplies ready! The anticipation was a 150% by this point and I was already exhausted because of it!

Parker told me what to write for their Santa letter and I wrote it word for word and thought it was hilarious and so cute. This is exactly the way Parker talks and I love it. And him. And Christmas Eve.

We set out the cookies and milk, sprinkled our GLITTER reindeer food all over the sidewalk that we frequently walk on to go in the house (ahhhh), and then read "The Night Before Christmas."

We let the kids all sleep in Lily's room so I laid with them until everyone was out. I was so tired by this point and could have gone to sleep but I had big, important plans for the night, so I pulled myself aways from Hayes' warm cuddly little body and headed to the kitchen to make ALL THE THINGS.

I had fallen WAY behind on my cooking/baking plans from that dumb stomach bug, so I stayed up WAAAAAAY into the night watching Christmas movies (It's a Wonderful Life, White Christmas, and Love Actually) and cooking/cleaning/gift prepping. It wore me out but was also fun and totally worth it!

One of the things I made was this Christmas Star for breakfast on Christmas morning. I (thankfully) had already made the dough and let it rise pre-stomach bug, so all I had to do was add the jam and make the star shape. I thought it came out pretty cool! (It looks even better baked!)

I also made sausage and cheese balls for Christmas morning, puppy chow, my great-grandmother's chocolate pie and buttermilk pie. I fell like I made something else but I can't recall it right now, haha. (We also had leftover raspberry almond shortbread cookies from last week--my FAVE.)

Oh....and we helped Santa out. ;)

Bryan spent the night in the backyard putting together the kids big gift: a trampoline! It took him 6 hours to put together. He drank a lot of beer to cope.

The house all cleaned up and ready for some excited little kiddies:

Our scavenger hunt letter that lead to the big gift (aka the trampoline). This is a Roberts family tradition that Bryan really wanted to use for our family. I love it!

Santa was here!!!

More Christmas fun later.....