Christmas 2017

First things first, the sickness report: No throwing up or fevers, mild congestion and sore throats for all. I'll take it.

As usual, life took on a near-frenetic atmosphere from Thanksgiving through roughly yesterday, the 30th. We started with home improvement, puppies, Christmas shopping, and Christmas concerts early and ended buried in wrapping paper and cookie crumbs.

Post-Christmas production kids. Nellie had a lead role and the other kids danced and sang!

Me + Puppy

Annie in the Christmas concert

DJ in the Christmas concert. 

We started vacation with a house party for Annie's classmate to watch the Polar Express. Big hit with Eddie, especially. Then I took the kids for our annual Christmas mall trip to visit Santa and do all the fun mall things, and we went to my mom's for cookie-making.

My favorite part of the mall activities--the kids put on an improv act at the Barnes and Noble stage. It started with a monologue from Nellie: "This is our play, we make it up as we go. What's it about? We don't really know!"

Cookie-baking!
DJ was showing off his first missing tooth.
 Eddie's watching carefully for the moment the cookies are ready.

Most of the rest of vacation up to Christmas involved Kevin and I working on The Biggest Christmas Present Ever. We pretty much put the kids to bed every night and threatened to cancel Christmas if they got out of bed, then worked like crazy in the basement until midnight.

Door signs

FINALLY, the big day arrived. Pam came two days early because of an impending two inches of snow, which turned into more like six inches before it was over. So it was a very beautiful white Christmas!

Church Christmas Eve

Calm before the fun-storm

Waiting in our bed for the littles to wake up and for us to make the coffee

Mary Cate really had no interest in anything but the little Ritz crackers

The big surprise was as happy as we could have hoped. We turned our basement into a gym with a mat, bar, balance beam, Thomas roller coaster, and more.

Over two days, we hosted 21 of our favorite people for food (waffles, Chinese food), fun (lots of basement play, crazy outfits), and presents (so many presents!). And then, the party continued as we celebrated two of our favorite guys!

Six!

The Christmas season can feel a bit like survival mode at our house, but we always find peace in the fact that the kids love it. They don't know any different and to them, Christmas means family party after party and noise and activity and music and all the rest. The togetherness is my favorite part, both "just" the seven of us and being with our extended families. Another holiday is in the books, with all the memories to show for it! Cheers to another year.