I know, I’ve been a posting slacker lately. I’ll just assume everyone knows the normal excuses around this time of year, so I will move on from them. A big thing we have been doing is getting ready for the girls, and enjoying these last few weeks as a family of three!
Ben had an awesome Christmas. Of course he had a great time at first Christmas with Gramma and Grampa. You can read about that here. We had a blast on the actual Christmas day as well. We started the night before, by attending church on Christmas Eve. With Ben we go to the kid’s service. This is in part because, of course, we have a child. It is also because it is the earliest service. This year it was pretty good! It was mainly singing interspersed with Bible passages. Ben loved the singing. He actually tried to sing along with us! Plus at this service they have a cake to sing happy birthday to Jesus, which I think is just so cute. It can be hard to get kids excited about the reason for Christmas. Santa has some good PR going. But I have found a lot of kids understand birthdays just fine, and knowing it is Jesus’s birthday helps draw some attention back to him. Ben was pretty good for the service! I was a little amused, as most of the kids there were a little older than Ben, or a bit younger. And they all sat nicely in the pews. Ben was quiet and well behaved, but sitting was not on his agenda. He was up, he was down. He was standing on the pew to look around. He was sitting on my lap, Meo’s lap, my lap, held by Daddy. He was still quite busy.
After dinner we headed back to Meo and Omi’s house. After a nice dinner and some fun watching Christmas Mickey movies, we wrote a letter to Santa and put Ben to bed. He did sit there while we wrote the letter. Obviously Pat and I wrote most of it, since Ben is new to the Santa game. A few years ago, before Ben was born, Pat and I helped Charlotte write the letter to Santa. I was writing and began of course, Dear Santa. I asked Charlotte what she wanted to write and she yelled out “Cookies!” Well I started the letter this year and asked Ben what he wanted to say. What did he yell out? Yep- Cookies! So apparently this is how we start Santa letters in our family. 🙂 Uncle Jared wasn’t able to make it home until after Ben went to bed, but it was great he made it!
Christmas Day we woke up and jumped into presents. Ben had fun handing out presents and helping people open them. He got a little frustrated that he was able to open up toys, but not play with them. He did pretty well though! Everyone was very generous with Ben, and he got some wonderful gifts. After presents, we cleaned up and got ready for the rest of the day. Aunt Chrissy, Uncle Wayne, and Cousin Kyle came to visit for the day! Really we just spent the day eating good food and enjoying each other’s company. Ben had fun running around and playing with his new toys.
The next day Chrissy, Wayne, and Kyle left to go visit other family they had in the area. Pat, Meo, Omi, and Uncle Jared went and saw the new Star Wars movie. As Ben and I had no interest in seeing that movie, we took a much appreciated nap. 🙂 I counted it as a win.
New Years Eve I have to saw we did not do anything too exciting. We let Ben stay up a little later, but again as he really doesn’t know what the night is about we didn’t keep him up too late. Pat managed to stay up until midnight. I fell asleep on the couch for a bit, but I was up at midnight to ring in the new year with Pat. Yes, a quiet little celebration. But when you have a toddler and are super pregnant with twins, well, it was just what I wanted to be doing.
New Years Day we have a tradition of just hanging out at home with our little family. We eat yummy food (basically finishing off the junk food from the holidays), wear jammies, and watch movies. I know, right now that is what we do a lot of weekends. But when Pat and I had kids we know that holidays would get busy quick. We spend a lot of them traveling to see family. And as the kids get older I know they are going to want to go out with their friends and not spend New Years with their parents. But nothing really big happens on New Years Day. Pat and I decided that would be our day to hunker down and enjoy some holiday family time with just our nuclear family.
Overall, it was a nice holiday season. We had a lot of fun with the family we got to see. Of course we missed the family we didn’t get to see. We had great food, and got to relax. And happily the girls did not decide to try to show up too early to see 2015. 🙂
I hope everyone had a great holiday season too. I feel we are recharged and ready to get going with 2016. Lots of excitement is headed our way, and I can’t wait for all the good things this new year will bring!
Happy Holidays from our family to yours! |
–Kim