Christmas at home

This year was one of the BEST Christmases ever.  I loved it.  We really felt the Christmas spirit in our home.  I tried my best to start and continue all the traditions I want my kids to remember growing up...  We did a Secret Santa (it was the 12 days of Christmas kind-of-thing) for 2 of our neighbors and the girls were the ones who did everything- the making of the gifts, the doorbell ditching, planning it all out- it was so fun.  (We won't talk about how one of the neighbors found out it was us and instead of being cheery and christmassy and happy and all warm-fuzzied about it- she said, "Oh thank goodness it was you- we were scared maybe someone was stalking us or something."  Talk about deflating the cheer!!!!!)
Anyway, despite that.... we really had a lot of memories to keep.
First- my awesome sister Heidi sent us a Christmas book a couple years ago.  Every day of December, it's like an advent book and you read an assigned scripture from the Bible, sing a Christmas Hymn, and read a really neat story about that day's theme.  We read such stories as "The Three Trees", "The Gift of the Magi", "The Other Wise Man"... Every night I would get all choked up trying to read the story to my kids.  Dan would just smile and let me keep going.  So we did that every night.

We made candy-dipped pretzels

Sipped hot cocoa almost on a daily basis... with "whoop cream" and sprinkles as Bird says.

 

Abigail got in to the fireplace soot.  Later she explained that she was trying to see Santa.  After the scrub-down, she told ma all about how dirty Santa must get.  She was pretty worried about him for a while.

Dan took the kids to Christmas in the Park- San Jose Downtown.  Looked really cute.  I have been working full time at the hospital, so I was sleeping and missed out.  Boo.

heh heh heh.

so cute and totally spontaneous.

jumping on the couches and taking off the pillows to make forts and landing platforms to jump on.  We do this several times a day.

Getting out all the Christmas decorations!!!

Putting up these lights around the piano room was the unexpected highlight for myself and the girls.  They had a whole room lit up by sparkly lights and felt like they were in a fairytale.  So did I.  When we were all done putting them up Abigail stood o the chair there and said, "Mommy I want you to take a picture just of me looking at all the sparkly lights. "  So I did. 

Christmas Morning running down the stairs!!!

Remember the Panda story?

Totally got the reaction I was hoping for :)

Each kid gets a new Christmas ornament in their stocking for the tree.  This year was little glass angels.

They LOVED their wings.

G-Ma Sylvia always gives us oranges in our stockings when we go to Utah- we carried on the tradition :)

Tays was excited about it too.

Bella thought Christmas was quite boring and uneventful...

You can see how excited she is to get her present.

Abigail got Adds a pack of tiny animals- PERFECT for choking on.

Adds got Bird a pack of fairies that they have really loved playing with.

finally bella joins in the fun.

My stocking gifts!

FAIRIES!!!!

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My Mom is so great.  She gave us the cutest book that had this Elf doll in it.  You put the Elf somewhere the kids can see it (it was the top of our tree.) and the Elf watches the kids and sees if they are naughty or nice- On Christmas Eve, Santa takes the Elf away (back to the North Pole) and the Elf reports everything to him!  It was so cute and fun- the Elf was always watching... (a little creepy- but don't be scared.  He was a nice Elf.)

Christmas dinner.  We had the traditional Swiss meal of Knofli, sauerkraut, ham, green beans, "weenies", (my MIL always calls them that and it's hilarious.  We have to do the same or it's just not the same experience.) Mmmmmmmmm!

We had "T" over for dinner.  Love that girl.  She is a great person and it was really great to get to know her better.

Merry Christmas Everyone!!!