Oh, how I love Christmas! I love the whole month of December. Starting December 1st, we began our advent calendar. We did our usual activities...cookie decorating, canvas painting, and movie watching. We added in some new activities as well; some of us went to an ugly sweater party,we played Minute to Win It, paid it forward in the drive-thru line, and we attempted to go to a parade (but got rained out.)
Let the pictures begin. We'll start with a cute pic of Graham before church one morning, just because...
This year we painted Rudolph!
Clare looked too cute in her "ugly sweater!"
Christmas Cookie Chaos was a fun morning, as usual! We were missing Megan and Brody, but Landon helped fill in the gaps!
Jane takes her decorating seriously, and her hard work pays off!
The fruits of our labor! You'll notice Graham's Cowboys "team" on the far left. We had to limit him to six Cowboys cookies. He wanted to do the whole team!
The Friday before Christmas we went to Mom and Dad's house for dinner. Nathan, Megan, and Brody and arrived, and we played a few Minute to Win It games. Mom was attempting to stack marshmallows with chopsticks.
The kids were so excited on Christmas Eve. We went to see The Grinch during the day, and then went to Dan and Dale's new house to celebrate! Scotty, Mary, Morgan and Elizabeth (Dan's mom) were there as well. It was finally time!
Graham is into football this year, and he was excited to add this jersey to his collection.
He was also excited to get this guitar! Now we just need someone to teach him to play it!
As usual, it was a fun night celebrating. We were spoiled with gifts, and we enjoyed spending time with family.
It was time to head home to get ready for Santa!
Santa came! And we were up super early to check out the loot!
He brought Jane and Graham new bikes,
a hoverboard for Sydney,
and a new phone for Clare. Four happy kids!
Graham bought Casey a Cowboys coffee mug.
Casey and I made a shadowbox for Graham of his visit to Cowboys practice where he got Ezekiel Elliot's autograph and then made the newspaper!
Sydney was super excited to get the hoodie that she desperately wanted, but thought was out of stock! Love this picture!
When we finished at our house, we showered and headed to Mom and Dad's, where we were joined by Nathan's family and Jennifer. We spent the rest of the day there, eating and opening presents. What we didn't do a lot of was take pictures! Here is a goofy pic of the kids before we started opening!
We had two delicious meals, a late brunch and then dinner.
One of my favorite gifts to give this year was a painting that I had done of Mom and Dad's cabin. I was so pleased with the way it turned out!
It really is a wonderful time of year, and we tried to take advantage of it all! Casey was off the entire week between Christmas and New Year's, and we loved every second of it!!
