Christmas Eve

Ok.. I am FINALLY ready to blog about Christmas!! I have so many pictures and it was giving me anxiety just thinking about sorting through them all! HA! Warning: LOTS of pictures!!

  

The kid’s Christmas ornaments for this year… Gray’s 1st Christmas ornament, LK’s Colts ornament, and Ethan’s Batman ornament. They are SO cute!! Thank you to the talented ladies on etsy for making them for me!! :)

 

I was really good about getting gifts wrapped and under the tree this year! We were all SO excited for Christmas!!

We all got ready to head to Gram’s on Christmas Eve. It’s tradition! LK and E had made “Happy Birthday Jesus” cakes earlier in the day with Chris’ mom.. however, Gray didn’t want to wait for anyone else to indulge …

 

It was still cute.. Gray-prints and all! :)

Before we left, we did our traditional “Pajama Exchange”. LK got American Girl pjs with pink loafer slippers, Ethan got PB Star Wars pjs with brown loafer slippers, and Gray got Hannah Andersson monster pjs. Chris and I got pjs too that we wore to bed, but everyone else got to wear them to Goo Goo's house! Everyone in the family was there around 6:30 and we immediately got to opening gifts. I was pleasantly surprised that Gray LOVED it!!

Are those not the cutest pajamas??!?!

 

He loved tearing the paper off his gifts.

My mom got Gray some fun lap toys and bath toys.

Mom got E some imaginext Batman toys.. he loves those!

Goo Goo got Gray a Leapfrog Puppy and the Poppity Pop Musical Dino.

LK stocked up on fun bubble bath stuff from Uncle Nathan.

Ethan’s big gift from Goo Goo this year… a Darth Vadar Helmet.. and..

A LIGHTSABER!!!!!

LK stocked up on Barbie clothes and accessories and Bitty Baby clothes and toys! She was SO excited!

HILARIOUS!!!!! He couldn’t have been happier!

Reading Bitty a book.

Grams and her sweet boy! This year he got Grams the body powder that goes with her perfume collection. (Every year my grandfather got her her favorite perfume/lotion/body powder, so after he died Ethan took over the yearly tradition! It’s their special little thing that they do.) We also got her a new Vera Bradley purse!

MeMaw and her babies!

He loves his Goo Goo

After opening gifts, we ate snacks and sang Happy Birthday to Jesus. Around 8:30, we loaded up the car and worked our way back home. Once we got there, we had to get busy getting everything ready for Santa to come!!

LK got the milk and cookies ready!!

We ended up getting the gingerbread men from Panera earlier that day. We decided to stop in for lunch and spotted them. I couldn’t resist!! They were the perfect gingerbread men!

It was Ethan’s job to put out the Reindeer food in the front yard! He had made some in school.

Daddy helped him out. (and yes.. that is a 1970’s nativity set! Chris found it in Gram’s attic and insisted on bringing it home!)

Ethan did a great job getting the Reindeer food out! Even Huck wanted to help!!

After the kiddos were asleep, Chris and I got started setting all the goodies out. We were finally in bed around 1:30!

More Christmas to come….

Blue Christmas!

This year we finally did it… we took LK to see the Christmas lights at Graceland! She was beyond ecstatic!!! She smiled ear to ear from the time we told her where we were going until we left Graceland! It was precious! We decided to go the Friday night before Christmas. Surprisingly there were several people there viewing the lights!

It was VERY cold outside.. but we had a great time!! And of course, sang Elvis Christmas songs the entire time in the car!

Graceland all lit up!

Can you tell how excited she was??!

Even Gray got to join in on the fun!

We had SO much fun! Even though I’ve grown up in Memphis, I had never seen the lights! I was a little excited too! ;)

Meet Jolly!

I have to apologize for being SO extremely behind on blogging!! I don’t even know where to pick back up! The past two weeks have been so full of activities that I just haven’t had the time to sit down and upload pics/edit/blog. Now that the holidays are over, I am going to make it my goal to get all caught up this week.

I’ll start with the last few days/events leading up to Christmas.

This year we had our very own elf that came to visit!! Now, of course, the regular old Elf On The Shelf just would not do! I decided to sew up our own little elf. However, I waited until the first of December and then I unexpectedly had my surgery. So needless to say, I was hurriedly trying to finish him up while I was recuperating. Not a pretty site, I assure you. I got him finished though!! His face didn’t turn out quite like I hoped though. He’s going to need a makeover before next year. My original intention was to make an elf for each kiddo. Under the circumstances though, I was happy to at least get one together. Next year, he’ll bring friends!!

SO… Meet Jolly! He’s our favorite little elf from the North Pole!

Jolly arrived on the 12th of December and stayed for 10 days.

He was VERY mischievous while he was visiting!!! His first night, he wrote the kiddos a sweet note, strung Christmas lights all over the dining room, and got a box of Lucky Charms out!

 

 

The next few nights were followed by… making chocolate chip cookies, which of course called for a snow angel in the flour!..

 

 

leaving messages (and TOOTHPASTE!) in the bathroom..

 

… replacing our stockings with everyone’s underwear! (except Mommy’s!) ;)…

.. giving some of his pals a ride on Gray’s choo choo…

.. helping himself to some breakfast goodies!..

 

.. leaving colorful drawings on the chalkboard..

.. he enjoyed a fun game of Operation.

He also climbed to the top of the Christmas tree and hung out with Santa. Last, but best of all….

He TP’d the kitchen!!!! He also left a sweet goodbye note for the kiddos!

We had SO much fun with Jolly this year! Really, I don’t know who had more fun.. us or the kids! They were immediately looking for him every single morning. I don’t know if he really helped with the “behavior” aspect but he definitely helped in the “belief” category! This year was the year that the rumors started amongst Lilly’s friends that Santa isn’t real. One of her close friends in her class told her that she didn’t believe in Santa. Luckily, LK still believes!!