Christmas 2014

We have a total of 6 different Christmas celebrations/events/places to go over the course of three days, the 24th-26th. We are always exhausted by the end, but enjoy every second with all of our families!

1. Christmas Eve brunch at my parents with my uncle's family. We actually managed to get all of the cousins smiling in one picture!

2. Christmas Eve night is at our house with my immediate family and grandparents-we have the traditional crackers, lots of food, and a made-up game that D always does an awesome job with, and late night rockbound and serious laughter. And Baileys. And lots of wine. And lots of fun. This is one of my favorite parts of our Christmas celebrations!

I grew up not really doing the whole Santa Claus thing so it has been a big debate for me to figure out how I wanted to combine the fun that is the mystery of Santa without having Santa and his presents overshadow what Christmas is really all about.  After much thought, we came to the conclusion that Santa would bring gifts in our kids stockings, and all of the other gifts would be from us- we don't need Santa getting all the glory for the good gifts!  We also told the kids the story of Saint Nicholas (thank you Veggietales St. Nick movie) and they picked out gifts from the World Vision gift catalog to give to children who need them around the world.  On Christmas Eve night we did write Santa a letter and left him some treats. The letter asked Santa to make sure that the gifts we sent got to the kids who need them. Santa wrote a letter back letting the boys know that the gifts made it to the kids, and thanking them for loving other people like Jesus does. And he made sure to tell the boys that he left them a few treats in their stockings too.  

It's nothing dramatic, but will hopefully be a tradition of stockings, giving gifts to others, and hopefully not having to lie too much to the kids in the process:) 

3. Christmas Morning! We aren't quite at the wake up super early to see what Santa brought/mom and dad bought phase yet (thankfully!) but the kids were SO excited to start opening their gifts. They thought it was very cool that Santa would leave them gifts in their stockings. They were most excited about the snow markers and toy cameras ($5 total at target for those rare finds!).

We attempt to make sure that there aren't too many presents, but every year it still seems like there's a ton by the time they get their gifts from everyone! They need to detox on the gift receiving after three days of presents:)

These trucks were their big present...safe to say, they were their faves. I actually attempted to vary the presents this year so that there were some books, games, crafts, toys, clothing items, and random stuff. (i'm writing this so i remember to do that again next year!)

4. Christmas Morning #2. It's still a little weird not to wake up at my parents house on Christmas morning (this is only the third year we've woken up at our own house!), but we love going over there still in PJ's after we open gifts at our house to MORE gifts and brunch at their house. To me, Christmas will always be opening gifts at my parents on Christmas morning.  I'm sure at some point if/when there are more families/kids and people move that will change, but I'm holding on to that for as long as possible:)
The kids were so patient as they indulged us in our "one person goes at a time and we all take turns opening a gift" routine:)

Mom surprised Dad with snowshoes- a totally random gift that he was so pumped about-of course we have had no snow so far!

And we surprised Mom with new show shoes too! Now it just needs to snow!

There were plenty of helpers to unwrap the gifts!

We are such traditionalists...our usual spots!

This was all Chris wanted for Christmas...he couldn't wait to open it:)

5. After an attempt at decent naps (there are quite a few very late nights during the holiday weeks!) we went to Christmas dinner at my Aunt's house with my family and my grandparents.  My cousins are so great at playing with our kids-kinda like how we used to play with them! It was pretty nice out so the kids had to get out on the trampoline to burn some energy for awhile!

These two! Ashley was born the day after we got married, and she just loves playing with Brayden. I'm so grateful that they have so much love (and attention/free babysitting!) for our kids.

And the ones who started it all! Love my Grandparents!!

My hysterical Dad, and even more presents!

This was my favorite moment of the night. No one in our family is really musical, or really cares to be, but my grandmother can play the piano and has always had a piano at her house.  We haven't done Christmas dinner at her house for the past few years so we haven't been near a piano on Christmas, but we used to sing a few very off-key Christmas carols.  They sold their house this year and reallocated a lot of their things to their kids houses. My aunt has the Piano now. Grandma was all excited that we could sing a few carols.  We did, sounded terrible, but these two little boys (especially Brayden) sat there and "played" with her the whole time, and actually sat and played nicely. Brayden was so enamored and just kept staring at Grandma. He has such a special love for them. I'm so grateful that they get to grow up with their great-grandparents too, because I have such wonderful memories of having my great-grandma as a big part of my life up through middle school!

Winding down the night with some new toys:)

6. The day after Christmas has become the day we celebrate with Max's family. It's nice to have a relaxing day, especially after all the stuff going on the two days prior, to just hang out.  It was gorgeous out (super warm!) so the kids were able to play outside too.  They actually took naps, which was huge, so we were able to celebrate with Max's mom and his sister's family without kids that were too cranky after a week of non-stop activities/no routine!  I was also a MAJOR slacker with my camera this day-I think the exhaustion peaked and I just sat...unless someone needed something, but the kids had fun playing with everyone and opening yet even more presents! These kids are set for a LONGGGGG time!

The cousins winding down at the end of the night.

Our one and only family shot from all of the Christmas events! 

Last few Advent Activities!

This is certainly delayed, but here's the last few activities of our Advent celebrations!

One of the volunteer firehouses in our town does this great fundraiser every year where you can pay to have the decked out fire truck with Santa visit your house. I dropped off gifts for our kids the week before and then Santa delivers them to our door!  We've done it a few times now and it keeps getting more fun as the kids get older! Tucker was giddy! Brayden was definitely excited too, just a little more confused as to what was going on. It was a big Gombos/Lovelett/Zietz family extravaganza of fun!

And this was when Santa made all sorts of inappropriate comments to my sister...as captured by this picture:)

So much for a good family pic:)

I love that Tucker goes to a Christian preschool for so many reasons, but I really love that their Christmas celebration is completely centered around the birth of Christ. This was their super cute Christmas production...Tucker was an Angel. In typical fashion, he stood there barely doing the motions, except for his few favorite songs. I'm sure his 10:00 bedtime the night before didn't help his attention either!

Christmas Eve has been at our house for the past few years and we love hosting it!  It's always filled with lots of laughs, food, some sort of home-made Danielle game, and some sort of Rockband performances. Although this year only D, Max and I were around for the rockbound extravaganza! I have the videos from some of our best performances but they are in the family vault:)

Putting the kids to work so the adults can play the Christmas version of Family Feud!

 Boys vs Girls!

And finally,  Christmas morning!!! All of our Christmas celebrations will have to be in another post!

Christmas Advent 2015!!

We are on year THREE of our activity advent calendar. What started as an excuse for me to get us out of the house and have stuff to do during the winter after Brayden was born, has become a very fun tradition of all types of activities to celebrate the advent. Each day has a different bible verse (that I obviously stole from Pinterest) so that we can attempt to keep focus on what Christmas is really all about:)  Here's what we've done so far!

1: Decorated our real tree and two fake kid trees, and started the chocolate advent countdown

2. Decorate the Window with Gel Clings (the things kids get excited about!)

And it wasn't an Advent activity, but we finished the rest of the house decorations too-the kids like to help Max with his Nutcrackers.

 3. Decorate the felt tree

4. Open new ornaments for the tree-Tucker got a Doc McStuffins one and Brayden got Dusty Crophopper-although they could really share since they both love both characters

 5- Have a playdate with a friend-did this but didn't get the pictures:)
6- Watch a Christmas Movie-We watched Charlie Brown Christmas, as usual!
7- Make a Christmas Craft. We made candy cane pipe cleaner ornaments and decorated foam Christmas trees with glitter glue and felt.  Surprisingly, they were really into it!

8-Make Christmas Cards. Tucker made one for his teacher which was so cute, but I didn't take a picture.
9-Open a Special gift-yay for $1.00 Christmas Tree Shop finds!

 10- Shop for a gift for a child in need. Again, no pictures, but the boys had fun picking out a foam football, some nerf guns, and a craft to donate to a collection that our church does every year.

11-Make a Gingerbread House-

12-Decorate Christmas cookies with friends-They loved decorating although I think they mostly loved pouring the sprinkles out onto the cookies....not sure if you can see the mounds on the older boys' cookies, but they were large:)

 --Not sure when this happened, but at some point, they got a nativity set that they could actually play with...although I Baby Jesus has been separated from his parents for quite some time now!

13- DD comes home!! Chris, Tucker and I went to pick up D from the airport! I got her a Tanzania flag so she felt a little more at "home". Tucker was having the most fun spinning in it while we waited.  He may have been even more excited to see her than me! Chris, Tucker, Max and Brayden hadn't seen her in person in a year!  That's a LOOOOONNNNGGG time! Tucker just kept saying, "DD is HOMEEEEE!" She's currently enjoying her rockstar status with our kids!

14-Go see the Christmas lights on Roseville. The pictures don't do it justice, but this family decks out their house. The hi light for the kids was definitely the train that went from the front to the backyard. They probably could have stayed and watched it all night...but there was this one time I forgot to change Brayden's poop diaper before we left to go see the lights....and nobody wanted to smell him anymore:)

15-Make Christmas treats for friends and family. The boys are actually very good helpers when it comes to cooking. I just have to unplug the mixer when I don't want it used. Last time we baked Brayden turned the mixer on (big stand mixer) right when Tucker was cracking an egg...let's just say there was major contact!

 16-Build a fort and have hot cocoa and marshmallows. Well this didn't happen because I ended up being home for 45 minutes and it was fort and hot cocoa or dinner, so I went with the latter.  At some point during the past few days though they did watch Frosty the Snowman and drink hot cocoa, so it was kinda a substitute.

17-Go to NYC and see the tree, etc.  Max, D, and I took Tucker into the city for the first time! We left Brayden so that we'd have more time to explore and not have to chase him around. We had a blast! The second Tucker walked on the train, he said, "This is AWESOME!" Then the conductor asked him if he wanted to beep the horn and he was in heaven!!  We saw the tree in Rockefeller center, checked out the NBC Store which was covered in Minions, Went to the M&M store, Toys R Us, ate lunch at Virgil's, and went to the Lego store. It was a very fun packed few hours:)

 18-Read a new Christmas book.  I didn't get a picture, but they got the Pete the Cat Saves Christmas book.
19- Make a Present/Cards for your teacher. We didn't do this one, but instead, (since Max and my plans got cancelled) we drove around town to look at the lights. A few moms compile a list every year of all the good houses and share it with the town which makes it really easy to check out the good places. We love the two houses by the lake that sync their lights to music that you can tune your radio too. The kids were baffled by it!

20-Go to Gram's holiday party/have fun with Nama and Papa. Max's Grandma has a holiday party each year that is fun to go to to see all of his cousins, etc.  We left Brayden with my parents (it was prime nap time and he's still getting over croup) and took Tucker to see everyone.

I can't believe it's only 5 more days until Christmas! (4 as I write this post!) I've been trying to really enjoy all of these festivities this year, knowing that many will be more difficult with a new baby to add to the mix next year.  I love the celebrations of this time of year, but while remembering that the whole reason we celebrate is because Jesus is born!