Christmas lasted unusually long this year at our house but with no complaints from any of us! We started off the season with our families first live Christmas Tree. Our original plan was to trek out into the woods and cut one down, but as the days passed by we realized our plan had been a little to over ambitious, so we headed to Home Depot to pick out the perfect one!
I've never had a live tree, even growing up, so this was a first for me. I had just heard horror stories of sap and pine needles everywhere, so I was a bit worried; but mostly excited!
It ended up being the perfect tree, I was impressed with how even it all looked, Jacob made a good choice!
We tried to pick one out together but couldn't agree on one, Haha, so Claire and I went home while Jacob went back and made the final decision!
Claire loved helping put up the lights and getting it all decorated. She took them off and then back on several times and almost fell into the tree a few times as well. So fun!
Before we put the tree up we sat Claire on the tree stand... Jacob and I were dying laughing - - as you can see here she obviously didn't find it near as funny as we did. She wasn't walking at this point so she was even more stuck than normal. Poor kids, get tortured!
We then hung up the annual Christmas advent calendar, which we let Claire do pretty much all of this year. She loved the Velcro on the ornaments, but wanted to sit and put it on and pull it off a million times; so we had to supervise to make sure it didn't get torn apart!
Then the spoiling began.... since we were headed up to South Jordan for Christmas, we did an early Christmas at our house. Claire got to open almost all her presents from Mom and Dad. She was having so much fun. I was expecting her to just play with the paper but she was all into her gifts and reading her books and making sure she played with each one.
She LOVED her Legos, and immediately started playing with those - - good thing we gave them to her last.
Surprisingly, she even loved the clothes - A child after her mother's heart! She made sure to pose for a picture with each gift... we trying to train her young!
She even made sure to pull the "totally shocked" face as she opened each gift. Totally made our Christmas! So much more fun when you have kids!
This one was one our of our favorites... she kept pulling this face and we were dying. I have no idea where it came from, but she does it all the time now. We love this little one!
Then off to South Jordan we went... we enjoyed a delicious Christmas Eve Dinner with the Thompson family at Pennie and Andy's. After dinner we read the story of Christ's birth and had the kids act out the nativity scene, always one of my favorites.
Then back home to get Claire to bed so Santa could come!
Claire must have been a good girl this year because Santa came and brought MORE presents!
Her stocking was my favorite. She pulled each item out individually and made her surprised face each time.
I am so lucky to have this sweet girl and amazing husband in my life. Christmas time is so important to me and I'm lucky to be able to share it with the people I love. Watching the excitement in Claire's little eyes makes me one happy mamma!
Christmas was on a Sunday this year so all the siblings went to church in the morning with my parents before we opened any presents.
After church it was home to get back in our PJ's and have a little breakfast before the sibling present opening began!
Jacob got his 2 favorite movies, Avatar and Inception, and some cold hard cash!
I got these fab new boots, pajama pants and some new shirts!
After presents and a little rest we were off to Aunt Shauna's for the annual Christmas Day Dinner! Her kitchen was under construction and she was still so sweet to have us over. By the time Christmas is over I think we've all easily eaten 2x our weight in delicious food - - part of the reason we LOVE holidays! :)
I didn't do very well with pictures this year at Shauna's for some reason, probably because I was too busy eating, lets be honest, but I at least got these 2.
This is right before we left to head home for the night. You can tell Claire had totally had it... Christmas must have just been exhausting for her!
We love celebrating Christmas with friends and family that we love so much! We are lucky to be so blessed and have so many wonderful things in our life. Merry Christmas everyone!
