BUT
We did have a holly jolly Christmas, despite all that! Here's how it went down.
On the evening Sunday the 23rd, we started off our Christmas fun by building a fort in the living room and watching A Muppet's Christmas Carol.
The next day we were hard at work tidying up the house for Christmas, making yummy foods, and getting ready for Christmas Eve fun! We spent the evening at another family's house from our church ward. They have 3 kids (with the 4th on the way) as well. We headed over in the late afternoon and our kids had a great time playing. They even decorated icecream cone Christmas trees!
Then we prepped for supper and had a huge spread of delicious food and appy's. Emerson was kept entertained by the family dog.
After supper we went on a "field trip" to the local fire station. This family goes every year on Christmas Eve and delivers 4 loaves of hot, fresh, raisin bread to the firemen working that night (with a pound of butter and a bag full of cinnamon sugar!) and we got to join in on this fun service. The kids even got to take a look inside the trucks! This pretty much MADE Eli's year. A happier kid there never was!
After our field trip we headed back to finish off the delicious food and play for a bit longer before we headed home to get ready for Santa. Thanks Johnston Family for having us over!
Earlier that day the kids and I had baked 4 dozen gingerbread cookies, so we were all ready for Santa's arrival! We set out some goodies for the man in red and his reindeer and sent our kids to bed in their matching jammies that Grandma Goetz brought them from France.
Christmas morning!!! Emerson was awake a good 2 hours before the other kids! Finally, shortly after 8:00 am the big kids emerged and had a good dig through their stockings, to see what Santa had brought!
Then we dove under the tree to see what else was wrapped up and waiting!
We munched on croissants and lots of yummy fruit while I fried up some eggs, sausage, and hashbrowns for our Christmas breakfast.
Then we chatted with family on Skype, Emerson had a nap, and we headed to the World Waterpark for some swimming to fill our afternoon!
I think Emerson actually had the most fun at the waterpark...and he was the best behaved ;) Our big kids had fun but were not quite as adventurous as we were hoping they'd be with so many fun things to do! I'm sure they'll have more fun as they get older.
We finished off our Christmas with a tasty BBQ (Even though it was -30C outside....steak just makes everything better)!
We spent Boxing Day getting ready for more family to arrive - Grandma and Papa King, and Aunties Amy and Megan. Considering we hadn't had hot water since we woke up on Christmas morning, cleaning up the house and washing the stack of dishes was SUPER fun. It involved a kettle boiling pretty much all day long. But we were so excited to have some holiday visitors!
We spent the next 3 days visiting, tobogganing, drinking hot chocolate, painting toenails, movie-going (The Hobbit!), and enjoying being together. We hadn't seen my family since August, so it was well overdue. (Throw in a couple of kids with a 12 hour flu, and it gets even more exciting!)
On Saturday we said goodbye to our family and Eli announced that... "Christmas is OVER". Still another week before school starts up, and the little monkeys are keeping us crazy and busy as usual! We had a fun and quiet New Year's with some tobogganing and a visit to a fabulous Christmas lights display. Then we ate some snacks and watched a movie - and had the kids in bed by 9:00 pm :)
It was a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year for us! Welcome, 2013!
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