A Northern Belle in Boots: Christmas 2015 Post 3 -- Celebrations 1, 2, 3 and 4

We get to celebrate Christmas at four different celebrations and each has it's own vibe/flavor/thing and I love all of them for different reasons. Here are our four celebrations:

Christmas Eve
Seth has to work all day this day, so it's really just an evening event for us. Though, this year, I let us watch movies like all day long, back to back, Christmas movie after Christmas movie which was nice because we keep screen time at a minimum around here.

Typically we go to church, enjoy dinner with Seth's parents at our house, open a few gifts from Nonnie and Gramps (they don't give us stockings on Christmas morning, so they bring a few over to enjoy the night before--this year it was their ornaments, Stuffeez and Snackeez), and sing songs around the piano. This year, David was in the hospital with complications from a recent surgery and couldn't join us and I was nervous about being able to go to church with only us (2 bigs plus a baby), so we didn't go to church. We introduced a new tradition of one gift for the boys to open, a board game that night and watched a movie. Nonnie stopped by for a quick visit and to give the gifts, so it was a very different night than usual but still very nice.

I got them dressed in the clothes we would have worn to church so I could take a picture of my three sons in front of the tree, first, and then we did the rest of the evening.

We got the bigs Rock'em Sock'em this year.

They have a blast playing with it, but their thumbs get tired quickly!

Christmas Morning
Christmas morning we get up and open presents just the five of us and it's awesome. Stockings first, then breakfast (always cinnamon rolls), then our presents--3 each just like Jesus got. We also have something bigger out and unwrapped for them to all share. Last year it was the roller coaster and this year we got two smaller things, a play table for Carson and then a new car ramp plus some new race cars for the bigs. This year Christmas morning also included a giant coffee because we were up most of the night because of a rodent in the attic. It'll be funny someday...

I look at this and think "grr, Pottery Barn!"

Here's a video of the boys coming out on Christmas Morning.

Carson looks so old in this picture!

Austin helped Georgia Mae with hers

He was just starting to crawl and would stick his butt straight up. cutie!

So many great things... nails, tree, cup

After presents I decided to try to get a picture of the boys in front of the tree before we got showered and ready to go to The Colony. I kinda miss that the pictures don't have the presents in the picture (because most were already opened), but we couldn't get one the night before, so this was the best we could do this year. Taking each year as its own right now.

This is what most look like.

So I consider this a success!

Christmas in The Colony
Austin asked to be Santa this year which was exciting for me because it meant that he thought he would be able to read the letters well enough to figure out who it went to. He doesn't actually know how to read, but he knows what most people's names start with which is how he could tell what went to whom.

nom nom nom

Graham would hardly eat this day and I thought he was just being a pill because he wanted to open gifts, but upon closer inspection later, he had a raging fever so Seth ran to CVS to get some Advil to calm him. He later threw up, so the actual Christmas day was very exciting. I hadn't brought a full change of clothes for each person, just a new shirt (figured they might get food on the shirt), so when he threw up, we had nothing for him to wear. Nonnie happened to have some 4t jammies in the closet, so he spent the rest of the day in giant pajamas. Poor little guy.

LaPean Christmas
I was surprised my parents wanted to celebrate Christmas with us this year. Even though they were wintering Texas, I didn't expect that they would want to hang out. When they approached us about wanting to do something, we offered the Saturday and Sunday after Christmas as options that would work for us. The original plan was for them to join us at our house on Sunday after church. We would have just finished service, they would have just arrived here. I got all my Spode out and washed and the holly glasses my mom used to use. I was super excited. They ended up not being able to make it for lunch, so we ate just us and then put the boys down for a nap. My parents arrived at the end of the nap and once the boys were fully up and awake, we had dessert followed by some games and some presents. We had asked my parents that we not do presents between the adults, they could just get something for the boys if they wanted, which they did. The boys loved it!