Christmas Eve and Celebration #2

This year, Ava was in the Christmas Eve service at church for the first time.  She was an angel and loved the idea of being "on stage" but when it came to actually doing it, she was quite nervous.  Well, and EXHAUSTED.  It was fun to see her up there! 

After church, we had our Christmas celebration with Mimi at our house.  For dinner we had ribs, green bean casserole and mashed potatoes!  Yum!  The kids tore open their gifts from Mimi, Brecken rode on his new train and Ava and Mimi made red velvet cupcakes with Ava's new Easy Bake Oven.  Then we made cookies and set them out for Santa--with milk of course!  After Mimi went home, the four of us crawled into Ava's bed, where Erick read The Night Before Christmas.  He has read it each year on Christmas Eve since Ava was born.  Love it!

After putting the kiddos to bed, Erick and I began wrapping and unpackaging like crazy.  You see, some gifts are wrapped, but the gifts that Santa leaves are always out of the box, unwrapped and ready for someone to play with them. 

Then we did our tradition thing of cuddling and watching Love Actually. :)

Happy New Year!

It's before midnight, but we had to let the kiddos celebrate before they went to bed! 

~Wishing everyone a wonderful 2012~

Getting Out Some Energy!

The kids and I just got back from a short trip to the park.  B-man has been running around here like a crazy man since last night (even though we were out and about yesterday) and I thought it would be good to get some energy out before lunch.  They had fun but he didn't lose any energy.  Is it bad to have a captain and diet before noon? :) 

Christmas Celebration #1

I am way behind on my holiday blogging!  I need to start at the first celebration which was with my dad's side of the family.  We got together with everyone at my dad's house a week before Christmas.  Ava got to spend the night at Nana and Papa's the night before so that she could hang out with her cousins.  Erick, Brecken and I arrived in the morning and the kiddos were very ready to open gifts.  After gift opening, Dad treated us to lunch at the club.  We got to see Santa and the kids sang Christmas songs and got their cute little faces painted--well, Brecken didn't but I don't think he would sit still that long. 

Botanica

We had a great time at Botanica last night! The lights were great and the kiddos had fun walking around and exploring. They even got to sit on Santa's lap!

Family Picture

And this is what it looks like when you try to take a nice picture with your children...

Cookie Day 2011

Each year, my mom has all of the grandkids to her house and they bake and decorate Christmas cookies and make candy.  It is a fabulous tradition that they have going on.  Even as they get older, they still want to do it!  Here are the pictures from this year.