Christmas Eve Party

We're at Grandma Mary Ann's house for the Christmas Eve party.

Connor, Kenny and Namhe

Will sees Santa for the first time this year! He is sitting on the floor waiting for his turn to sit on Santa's lap. 

Santa is giving out books and and candy, oranges, and peanuts. Abbee tells him what she wants for Christmas.

Baylee is the oldest grandchild here. Haha. But she still sits on his lap.

Emmy didn't like Santa at all! But she calmed down when he handed her a bag of treats.

Paisley was fine as long as she didn't look at him.

Will's turn... he was happy.

Santa left and we all played Bingo.

BINGO! Will waiting his turn to pick a present.

I lifted him up to get a better view.

He got a tractor and a flash light.

Emmy eating a cookie and pulling my earring.

Will opened his present from Grandma Mary Ann. Lol. He was so excited to see a pop gun!

Emmy got a fun phone and a cute princess towel.

Willie got a new tractor.

Grandma made the girls super soft pillow cases and gave them other goodies.

Lana and Abbee

Emmy is tired.

Brinley and Will on the rocking horse.

Paisley is hanging out with Kent.

All the kids playing together.

I don't know how Grandma does it every year. She prepares a dinner, a visit from Santa with gifts, Bingo, and more gifts for all her children, grandchildren and great grandchildren... all by herself (and there is a lot of us.). It is so much work to carry on this Christmas Eve tradition at her house. She didn't want any gifts in return this year. Instead she asked us to give to the needy. All of us took turns sharing our stories of giving to help those in need this Christmas season. It was heart warming to hear. 

Thank you for all your efforts Grandma. It is truly appreciated.

Dec 24, 2012

Kalyssa Is Cooking

Kalyssa's first time cooking on the stove... all by herself. She made mac-n-cheese. :)

Dec 22, 2012

Christmas Sugar Cookies

Will is cutting out stars in his dough. I make Christmas cookies with the kids every year. It's batches of fun! Lol.

Kalyssa and Abbee cut their shapes out.

Baylee is helping Willie.

I am the baker... I couldn't get the batches in the oven fast enough. We made A LOT of cookies.

Time to frost them!

...add sprinkles.

Will is eating them now...

...he'd only eat the "Paizzy" cookies. Haha. He thought all the little gingerbread shaped cookies were little cookies of Paisley.

Emmy and Abbee dancing to Christmas music.

Emmy loves cookies too.

Then Kalyssa piled the kids into the bike trailer to play. Emmy is smashing her face against the net. :) She is so silly sometimes.

Dec 18, 2012

Christmas Tree Casualty #2

The twins were both to blame for this one! The 3 foot tree sits on top of the dresser and the twins like to pull on the  beads...

...the beads were pulled too hard this time and the tree landed on top of Emmy. It stunned her for a second. 

Paisley walked off with 2 bulbs, and Emmy hung around to pull more stuff off the tree.

Dec 14, 2012

Christmas Choir Program

Baylee and Abbee are in the Cowboy Choir at school. They have a Christmas concert tonight. :)

Abbee is on the far left in middle row.

Brandon is taking the pictures and holding Paisley... "How do you work this thing?"

It's Abbee 1st year in choir. Baylee has done it for 3 years now, but she had a championship basketball game tonight and played in that instead.

Great job Abbee!

Dec 13, 2012

12 Days of Christmas

I'm super excited its December 13th! Finally!

My hidden stash of fun.

I'm doing the 12 Days of Christmas for Brandon. I've never done it before and I've been ready and waiting for awhile now... just counting down the days when I can start having fun with it. Brandon loves presents and surprises. Kind of like a kid ;O) ...so he should really enjoy this. They are simple, inexpensive gifts, but required a lot of clever thought and planning to make each gift coordinate with the number of that day.

I know the 12 Days of Christmas actually starts on Christmas Eve through Epiphany, BUT I want my 12 Days to start on the 13th and end on the 24th. So last night, I hid his first little gift inside his boots with a little tag that read, "On the 1st day of Christmas my true love gave to me...". When he put them on this morning, he found the present and brought it to me and said with a glare, "What is this?" I told him to just open it, I've had this done long before we said we weren't buying each other gifts this year.

The story behind his glare: It's going to be a TOUGH Christmas since we're closing on a new house this month, and I expected that would be the case and planned this way in advance so not to break our Christmas budget or our 'no gifts for each other' rule.
{{wink wink}}

Then he text me at 9:00am... "Your freakin amazing!"

I knew he'd like this.

Dec 13, 2012

Willie's Eye

I told Will to look to the side... 

he has a popped blood vessel in his eye. I've had 2 in the past 2 years, but I never got one as a kid. :o/

He's had it for 3 days now... so weird. He hasn't bumped it on anything. His right eye was black from bumping it and its going away now.

I replayed the pictures I took of Will for him to show him the blood in his eye and he wanted to take a picture of me next, and he told me to look to the side. :) We played it back and he said, "No blood on Mama." He's funny. He always covers the flash with his finger.

Dec 13, 2012