Christmas Eve & Christmas 2015

Mike was supposed to go to work Monday-Wednesday  this week, but they had problems on the range so he didn't have a whole lot to do. He ended up taking Wednesday the 23rd off which was nice because we did some deep cleaning in the basement.

Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve we had our traditional dinner out to McDonald's and then drove around to look at Christmas lights. I think the McDonald's tradition may be combining to an end real soon because Emily and Mordecai are getting a bit too big for the play place and bore easily. We will still have to eat out or something...maybe Chinese food will become our new tradition. It has been a fun little memory to have though. 

After dinner and lights we came home and had the kids quickly open their Christmas pajamas from Mom & Dad because we were having a special visitor. BC had an awesome Santa outfit and came to visit our kids. It was very fun watching them scream with excitement. I don't think it will be too long before Emily and Mordecai will lose the magical part, and that's sad. After he left we bathed kids, watched the Nativity video on lds.org, read Luke 2, said prayers and put the kids to bed. Mike and I stayed up and watched the new Mission Impossible movie and then went to bed.

Christmas Morning

Christmas morning started off early-like 5:30 a.m. with a FaceTime call from Mom & Dad in Wisconsin. Mike is constantly teased about owning a Daewoo Nubira so we decided to buy a gag gift for daddy that said, " you can't buy happiness, but you can buy a Daewoo Nubira and that's sort of the same thing." We requested to have them call us so we could watch his reaction when he opened it, we just didn't think they'd call us so early our time. After that Mike and I just cuddled in bed until Mordecai woke up to use the bathroom and realized Santa had come. He woke the girls up about 6:30 a.m. and we headed down to open presents.

The big gifts this year were a
Trampoline - Grandma & Grandpa Bainbridge

Wii-U - Santa

Emily- rollerblades

Mordecai- Legos

Ruby- iPod

Ivy- outfit from grandma & grandpa Rogers

Family- 72 hour kits

Desi- large wall clock, Pureology (shampoo& conditioner) & perfume

Mike- bike pump & leaf blower/vacuum

Felicia & Tom arrived at 3:00 p.m., a day early because they were trying to beat the snow storm we got that evening. So they were here for dinner in addition to the Bank's family that we had invited. It was a fun evening just visiting and eating. Poor Emily got sick that evening and threw up all night long, but luckily nobody else got it.

Decemeber 2013

Instead of trying to back post all of December I'm just going to add it all in one. At the end of November I was on the hunt for a Christmas book that had a scripture, song and story. I remember Mom having one when we were growing up and I desperately wanted to do that for our family. In addition though I wanted to do something with the kids each night in December. Some of the things had specific nights to do them on like open Christmas jammies (Christmas Eve), but most of them were whatever we felt like doing. Here are some pictures of our activities.

 

We strung Froot Loops for the kids tree:

 

 

Decorated our big tree:

 

Made Snowflakes one night so they would snow in the kitchen:

 

Attended our Ward Christmas Party which Santa came to:

 

 

Decorated gingerbread houses and men:

 

Of course we did our annual Christmas Eve dinner at McDonalds, which the kids love cause they have the play place to themselves. Then we looked at light and home to open Christmas Eve jammies:

 

And of course Christmas Morning:



 

 

The big items this year were the Nintendo 2DS the older 3 got. Ruby got everything "Doc McStuffins", Emily loves her 'Kidz Bop" CD's and Mordecai loves his Megazord. Ivy didn't really care. Mike loved his riding pants I got him and I loved my down feather pillow inserts Mike got me and the baseboards he has installed. It was pretty low key day which we loved.

 

New Years Eve we were invited to a couple of places, but since we were all getting over the last of influenza we all picked up 1-2 weeks before Christmas, we opted to stay home and have treats and play games as a family. Mike has been home from work for 2 weeks and we all have loved it. Sleeping in until 8:00 a.m., being lazy in the mornings and just hanging out with each other. It has been fun.