Christmas 2011

It goes by fast every year.  We had such a nice time.  Our favorite memory is riding The North Pole Express.  We made lots of nice treats.  We had a good turn out at church for our Christmas themed family fun night.  We had our traditional salmon dinner on Christmas eve.  Christmas Eve service was nice at church.  We came home and opened one present and read Twas the Night Before Christmas before writing Santa a letter and heading off to bed.  We woke up and had to wake the boys up at 8:30am.  Since when do kids sleep in on Christmas day?  We had streusel, egg bake and mimosas for breakfast and took our time opening presents.  The mess waited to be cleaned up until the next day.  We spent the evening at our friends, The Boes house and had a nice dinner together.  By the end of the night, we were exhausted.  We are very blessed and thankful for all that we have.  I absolutely LOVE that our boys understand that it was Jesus’ birthday and that is more important than anything else. 

Christmas 2012 Preparations

We had fun getting ready for Christmas.  We LOVE cooking and the boys are the best little helpers.  We made Christmas cookies.    Lots of treats for the neighbors: peppermint bark, cupcakes, truffles, dipped pretzels, etc.  We made gingerbread houses.  We love baking and it is a special time to share that hobby in the kitchen together. 

Archer Tidbits

I have to laugh at some of the things that come out of these boys mouths lately. 

On our mini vacation (post to come on the vaca)

William: “hey, turn on that machine blower thing.”

Harry:  “it’s called a fan!”

I guess I never realized we don’t have fans in our house and somehow William never heard the term, fan.

 

Tonight hours after buying a Venus Fly Trap plant:

Harrison: “Mommy, where is your dragon snapper?”

Me: “huh?”

Harrison: “Your dragon snapper plant.” 

And the stockings were hung by the chimney with care

Looks like someone made a visit….

Trip to the North Pole

We completely surprised the boys last night with probably the best gift we could have gotten them. We usually open our ‘Christmas Pajamas’ on Christmas Eve but we had a special night planned so they got to open them early. And they were very pleased with their new PJs. In fact, it is 10am here and they have begged me to let them keep them on this morning.

Scott and I also wore our pjs and we took the boys to Fillmore to catch “The North Pole Express.” William was so excited to see the conductor.

The boys got a lot of extra attention. The elves were very excited that the boys brought their “Polar Express” book aboard. “Tickets please!”

Cookies and milk while a story was read “Twas the Night Before Christmas.”

After the elves passed out the “I believe” bells we were at the North Pole to pick up Santa. Time to ring the bells for Santa to come in. The first glimpse of Santa made it all worth it!

I think towards the end Harry was a little tired.

The boys already asked today if we can go back to the North Pole tonight. This has got to be one of our most favorite Christmas memories to date.