The Spofford Christmas Season 2012

We get to do a lot of Christmas celebrating around here! In addition to our Christmas Countdown Calendar, and Cookie Delivering that we do, we have several events that we do with family. This is an attempt to consolidate all the festivities down to one post.

General Christmas photos
I didn't put up a single Christmas decoration except the tree and the stockings. I felt a little Grinch-like not putting more effort forth, but I simply didn't have the energy to spend on something that would ultimately require more work/effort down the road. Just. Couldn't. Do. It.

I felt so anti-decorate that the only decorations that went up on the tree were ones we received this holiday season. I was just too tired.

I think it still looked really pretty, though!

Christmas Eve.
On Christmas Eve, we go to IBC's candlelight service with Kim and David. Afterward, we come to our house to eat dinner (this year they ate spiral-cut ham and I had steak as I don't like ham). We really enjoy getting to spend this time with them as the time is a little more special when there aren't 20 other people around (or, ok, even just 5 other people). Once we're done eating dinner, they leave to go home and receive Spencer, Cheryl and DTI meanwhile we change into our jammies and get ready to eat yummies, drink hot cocoa and open our presents.

All the kids went down front to hear Pastor Andy read the story he chose for this year.

We have decided to go with the 3 Gift Rule. Jesus got three gifts, so our kids will get three gifts. Plus a stocking. Their gifts are sorta in categories, but not explicitly: something to read/watch, a toy, and something I think they'll enjoy and could use. Their stocking gifts are not wrapped and are things that will be "used up" or things they need (same goes for Seth and I's stockings). Some of their stocking gifts were vitamins, socks, toothbrushes, dental floss (Austin seriously loves clean teeth ;-) Seth got Burt's Bees shaving stuff and some Reeses candy. Seth gave me some tinted Burt's Bees and a rain gauge!

(This cheese! face is starting to get annoying.)
This is Austin playing with the Little People nativity set. We talked about why we celebrate Christmas, that the Wise Men were making a journey and delivered gifts and we were about to open gifts in memory of that event. I'm sure he didn't understand a word we said, but it was nice to remind ourselves.

I want to try to get a picture of them by the tree each each in their jammies just before present-opening. Graham was still so young that it was a hard one to pull off.

Austin by himself was much better. Albeit it has his Cheese! face going strong.

This is his face upon seeing his new Thomas spinbrush toothbrush. He was in love!

Some floss of his own!

He wouldn't keep opening presents until we took Thomas out of the package for him to start using.

We had a bit of a breakdown right after this photo, so you'll see that the next pictures are in a different location.

Austin is by-far the best gift receiver I've ever seen. He has zero clue what he's opening, but yet it's still "Ooh! Ahh! Wow!"

He did know what this was... Well, that it was Elmo-something, at least.

I like to get a picture of them with all their gifts from us.

And then they can continue opening any presents that they got from other people (This is from my Grandma LaPean.)

This is from Auntie AM and Uncle Mike, but was mis-labeled by Amazon and should have been for Graham.

Graham's first Christmas!
(Sheala shared a fun Christmas decoration idea of framing a photo of each kid from their first Christmas and putting it out each year. Hope to buy some frames next season and get us started with that.)

The boys got similar books in that they were nice-quality, gilded-edged books. Graham's was Nursery Rhymes and Austin's was Bedtime Stories.)

See how excited he is about his Glow Worm!?

Each boy also got a book about Christmas, Graham's was about the historal, true St. Nick and Austin's was about the history of the Christmas tree. (All of our holiday/seasonal books are in a box in the closet and I hope to bring them out each time the appropriate holiday rolls around. That way they'll be more special than their "normal" books.)

From my Grandma LaPean.

From Auntie AM and Uncle Mike (should have been for Austin, but that matters very little since they'll be sharing everything anyways.)

Austin is obsessed with this helmet he got for his birthday last October and WOULD NOT take it off.

We spend time reading a Christmas-themed book just before bed. (We got the story behind the Candy Cane from a family member, which just adds to all our Christmas-themed books, so in coming years, we'll have plenty to choose from! :-)

Georgia only got one gift this year and zero stocking stuffers.

And after this picture was taken, she promptly decided to have nothing to do with them.

Christmas Day, part 1
Christmas morning, we get up, change into casual clothes and head to Kim and David's for a morning full of the immediate family, fun, presents!

Graham was dressed in his casual clothes and Austin still in his jammies. The stripped pants together was just too much to resist!

There's a lot of love in this room!

We go in age order, so Graham got to go first. Austin was very helpful!

He loves tearing every scrap of paper off!

Kim and David were dog sitting, so that made 3 dogs, 5 kids, 6 adults, and 1 cat. The floor was too crazy a place for Graham, so he sat on the couch next to me. (Thanks AM for the socks!)

This was a DTI gift and Austin's hand was small enough to fit inside and steal candy. Which he tried to do often!

I'm the youngest adult, so once the kids are done, I get to go! :-)

It's a little flapper-esque, right?

He was such a sweet, good boy the whole time. He loved looking at the huge bow on my head.

Pop-On Pals!

It was for Graham, but Austin was thrilled!

He actually did this a lot, though I'm not sure why.

Aggie Pillow Pet

I loved how sweetly David was holding onto Graham here.

I think this hat is Irelands, but Austin never misses a chance to put a hat on!

Seth gave all the dogs Christmas bows. SO cute.

Christmas Day, part 2
We're done with opening gifts with the immediate family before lunch time and we rush around clearing up the mess from the morning and put the babies down for naps. Everyone else arrives and we eat Christmas lunch. We are ready to start opening gifts about the time that naps are over, so we changed their clothes (pretty much solely so that the photos would be differentiable) and began again. I wasn't feeling well that day and it got worse and worse as the day went on (I had zero voice by lunch time) and so we left much more quickly than we would have otherwise. It also happened to snow and get really cold that afternoon, so going home before dark was the safest option anyways. We came home and I went straight to bed. Seth managed everything that night which made me both very grateful and sad that I was so ill on Christmas. I'm VERY glad he got some pictures of the snow and ice, though!

Austin LOVES marshmallows. He probably came close to eating half a bag of mini ones that day because different people kept acquiescing to his requests!

Here he's trying to offer them to others... How sweet!

I'm not sure why, but he really wanted to wear Seth's sweater and then was about to kill himself because it hampered his walking so much.

Packed to the gills coming home. And we left half of it there!

Just seeing this photo makes me want to drink hot cocoa!

Icicles with our icicle lights!

New Years Day; Houston Family Exchange
On New Years Day, we get together with Kim's side of the family to do an ornament/$25 gift card exchange (while playing White Elephant) and all the kids get gifts. It's really special because we rarely get to see that side of the family, and I love playing the game. I was once again not feeling very well so there aren't many pictures from that day. I wish I had thought to get more.

The toy featured in the Austin "sings" post.

LaPean gifts
My mom and dad sent their gifts for the boys after Christmas, so we made a little activity of opening them and taking pictures. And since I had learned how awesome a gift receiver Austin is (and hadn't gotten any video from the actual Christmas activities), I decided to try during this event. I think I took video of every single gift, just to try to capture the best reaction. Love my sweet boy! Cheese face included, I suppose.

Cheese!

I love them together and I loved all the shiny wrapping my parents used.

He immediately sought out balls to roll down the inside of the slinky.

The aftermath.

One of his favorite gifts they sent.

A video of Austin's gift reaction:

Please note how he has to get every. single. piece. of. paper. off. ! And he exclaims "wow!" before he has any clue what's inside. So cute! (Note to people giving toddlers and babies gifts: please don't use so much tape. I can't take cute photos if I'm busy helping them open them cause they're sealed so well!)