Simply Having A Wonderful Christmastime

Christmas Eve photos get a little bit harder to make each year.  Partially because the sheer number of them but also because the boys aren't really that into it!  They do it for me and they do it for their sister.  I'm lucky they play along mostly!  It's really cute when your oldest can read The Night Before Christmas to your younger ones and read it with as much dialect as you could!  He's a pretty neat big brother!

 But our little silly can always seem to evoke a smile!

Kisses are the perfect  prize for reading her a great "Ho-Ho" book!

"Ho-Ho" or Santa was really good to these kids!   They got lots of fun toys to play with and unwrap.  That minnie has become her shadow and she drags it everywhere!

The boys got SET-UP in the camping category!  Everything they need to head out on a camping adventure with their dad.  Lil and I will stay home and make sure to keep the showers running properly!

Chritmas morning starts out with a couple of sleepy heads!

But this little fireball is the opposite of sleepy!  She thinks this tent in the living room is all for her.  She hasn't even gotten started on her own gifts yet!

Now THAT's more like it!  Bitty Baby for my sweet American Girl!

Mommy got something special too!  I got our blog book printed for the year and wrapped it up for under the tree!  It was a great gift to read all the sweet memories of my little munchkins!

That wasn't the only baby Lillian got!  This one has her name on it and there may or may not have been a couple more!   We're in the babies!!

Minnie mouse makes every move she does for a while. Its funny to see her beside a stuffed animal the size of her!

It wasn't long before our fancy Christmas breakfast commenced. It always starts with mimosas.  This year I spiced up my mimosas with a little blood orange liquor!  It was a winner!

I also made Nutella French Toast.  It wasn't good.  At all.

You don't believe me either, do you?

It was so so delicious!

Stockings are always exciting in our house.  You never know if you'll get tickets for sky diving or socks and underwear and some lucky years, you get BOTH!

This little mommy is fierce in the car of her babies.  Her new stroller was deemed the outdoor stroller and she took it literally.  She took those babies on a walk, er run? as soon as she got a chance!

Jacksy keeps his best brother award while riding her around one their new 360 scooter!

And there it is!  It's 2pm on Christmas and it hit 84 degrees.  It was so hot we didn't even stay out very long at a time.  We wore shorts and flip flops to play and forget the hot chocolate, we needed mojitos by dinner time!

Only in Texas can you have a hotter Christmas day than any other major holiday including some 4th of July's!  

We all broke out into a chorus of "I'm dreaming of a HOT Christmas!"

It was simply a wonderful Christmas-time!

25 days of Christmas dresses

First you have the days of Christmas song, next you have ABC's 25 days of Christmas movies and THEN you get to the holy grail of Christmas celebrations.  You celebrate 25 days of Christmas dresses!    I don't know if you're currently aware of my love of all things Christmas.  I mean I'm the girl that put my tree up before Halloween and wasn't ready to take it down after New Years.  So my love for Christmas extends well into Lillian's wardrobe.  We had quite a collection of Christmas attire, so much so that we were able to cover nearly every day leading up to Christmas with a new dress!  It was a wonderful parade of reds and greens and I love each and every one!   Some are Christmas specific and some only fall into the Christmas color scheme.  You can be sure there is a bow to match each one!  

She loves her baby cousin Wyatt and we loved being in Nashville with them!

This was possibly HER favorite Christmas dress!  She wasn't as into the dresses as her momma but she looked cute even in this one!  I think she was just highlighting our special handmade stockings! 

The brothers sure are cute!  They just don't want to participate in the Christmas clothing parade!

Even a birthday party at Chuck E Cheese is a reason to don a Christmas dress for display!

An afternoon at the park?  A Christmas dress to correspond with that too!

My peppermint striped girl and her tutu!  

We immensely enjoyed the warm weather during the Christmas season. There were many afternoons spent outside!

You guessed it!  Even our Pajamas were Christmas!  Lillian would say that "Ho-Ho" was on her nightgown.

This little tree dress was my sisters when she was little.  It's precious and vintage and special because mom made it for us!

If you're going to touch the elves, you're at least wearing a cute Christmas night gown!

Even Mickey Mouse gets in on the Christmas action!

She was the MOST fun this Christmas!  Just a pure Christmas joy!

And an angel!  We forgot about a total angel!

And so ends the 25 days of Christmas dresses until next years month long parade!  

Turning 5...again

We were on a plane for Thanksgiving and Jackson spent half the flight annoying me to watch something on my phone.  I finally told him that he could watch it if he would do various outrageous things and he balked at all of them.  Until I suggested that he NOT grow up!  His birthday was coming up soon and I had been lamenting about him hitting double digits.  I decided that if he would agree to only turning 5 on his birthday that we would have a deal.  He agreed.  And from then on, I would only acknowledge him turning 5 on Dec 15th.  I got a cake, I used 5 candles and he even managed to get a couple of 5th birthday cards.  He didn't think I'd follow through with it and he laughed when I showed him the cake we got for his family dinner party!

I even took 5 boys out for a party!  After school one day I took Jackson and 3 friends to ice skate and get burgers.  We got to the ice rink and realized it didn't open for another hour!  It's Christmas time near the mall, it's also opening weekend for star wars movie!  It was SO crowded but we treked over to the mall to waste an hour before skating.  I knew the pet store and Lego store could easily kill an hour and we could go skate as planned.  

It's like bringing a petting zoo to the party!  Who doesn't like puppies?

Putting ice skates on 5 boys proved to be quite a task!  I'm happy I didn't have a little Lady with me to chase around while I was tying shoes!

He loves ice skating and he is actually pretty good at it!  

We took them to Jerry Built burgers for dinner and birthday cookies!  They had fun writing on the chalkboard wall there!

I think they had a good time and he decided turning 5 a second time wasn't half bad! ;)

Oh, and Jason had to give him the obligatory birthday spankings! 

And yes! 

 He got 10 of those!