Christmas!

 ‘Twas a great Christmas (which is the only time you can really use the word “’twas”).  Like everything else this year, 'twas kind of a mess, but it worked out great in the end.

I got out the decorations at the beginning of December, the kids were excited and put out the ones they liked and the rest of them slowly trickled out during the following 3 weeks.  In the mean time we had a room full of boxes, which Annie would go through occasionally to find something to ruin.  Our fake, white tree went up, the kids decorated it by throwing the ornaments at it (they’re all plastic) and it stayed kind of crazy looking for a couple weeks.  Here it is after I rearranged it and spaced things out.

I had the kids pick a few animals out of their massive stash, I spray painted them and added glitter.  I absolutely love the way they turned out.  They fit our fun, kid-friendly tree perfectly.

Because I can’t have my beautiful, bird-themed, natural tree full of delicate ornaments, I decorated our entry way with fresh garland and my favorite ornaments.  It turned out beautifully and I would stand and stare at it for way too long.  

Annie did some destroying here, but not too badly.

Here is the cutest Christmas kitty before I hung up the garland.

We did a variety of scaled back Christmas activities, including one of the kid favorites, making gingerbread houses.

The Christmas card was kind of a fiasco this year.  Here is a portion of the letter to explain the picture:

We had a lot of cute pictures to choose from, but the picture on our card I felt was the best representation of our family and our year, especially considering what was going on while taking it.  I had a really cute pose in mind, but after days and days of waiting for the stars to align, I finally set up the tripod and pulled the trigger.  I gave up on trying to match outfits and brushing hair, and settled for licking my thumb to clean food off faces.  Jared got home from work right as the sun was going down and we were losing light fast.  I had to wake June up from her nap, even though she has a cold, is teething and has barely slept in the last few days.  I rushed everyone out the door and as kids complained about being cold, I shoved them into the apple tree.  Jared yelled at everyone to zip it and look at the camera, Lily fell out of the tree, Jack cried about his butt and hands being cold and wiped snot off his face, Annie peed her pants and made yellow snow, which is fun, but then cried because it was cold, June had just barfed all over herself and I just kept running back and forth from the camera, laughing like a crazy person, fruitlessly trying to get a decent picture.  As exhausting and ridiculous as this seems, this has become standard practice for us.

Here are the other pictures that did turn out.

The best part of all of the Christmas season was that Meddy, Jared’s sister, PJ and Brayden came to visit from Oklahoma (Caitlyn is on her mission).  I think it’s been 1 ½ years since we saw them last.  We had a great time.

Poor Bido, the little kids would not leave him alone for one second the whole time he was here.  

Christmas day was fun.  I made everyone wear matching jammie pants.  I was most excited to make Jared wear them, because I knew he would hate it (at least pretend to), but I bought him the wrong size so he escaped the agony.  We laid around in our jammies all day and ate delicious food.

The kids got some good loot, although we tried to reign it in this year.

June got some toys to chew.  Annie got dress ups, puzzles and a doll.  Jack got lots of Legos. Lily got a friendship bracelet maker and microscope, plus a bunch of other stuff for everyone.  Jared and I got all the stuff that we've bought in the last month, including TV, house speakers, car speakers, etc.  (we're dorks.)

We got a marble run thing and a slack line for everyone.

Bido got a Ukelele, Jack was jealous, and Meddy cleaned up.

Annie continued to redecorate the tree until it came down.

I'm not going to lie, one of my favorite parts of having them here is the food.  PJ is a phenomenal chef.  I love to watch him cook and they are all appreciators of deliciousness, so we have lots of fantastic meals and snacks.  Christmas dinner was phenomenal, especially compared to the last couple years when we thought it would be fun to go out to eat, but ended up being depressing.

Another day we went up to Salt Lake.  We had lunch at The Red Iguana (again, loving the food) and went to The Leonardo, a hands on kinda art museum.  Here's the gang helping Jack make a project.

We went to the lights at Temple Square.  As usual, I screwed up the pictures.

Except this one, Jack is such a poser.  He loves it.

The next day Meddy, Peej and Bido went home and I started the clean up.  We were sad and wish we could spend more time with them.  It was a great, relaxing, fun time and we're so grateful that they came.  We love these guys.