Christmas in Holmen {part 1}

Lots of games... a trip to the Lacrosse Children's Museum with Aunt Ashley, Uncle Will and Emma... more gifts... family...

Christmas morn'

These candy-filled canes always seem to evoke the most delight on Christmas morning Introducing her horses to their new stable Looking for the pickle opening one of the sweet books from his godparents <3 She ADORED this dancing, singing doggy from her godparents :^) Between wakeful kids and insomnia, sleep wasn't happening for me on Christmas Eve. I was up at 3 and got three hours, tops. But it was a nice change to be down and enjoying the peaceful quiet before anyone else was stirring. Well, the big girls were waking Opal up at 6 am, but I told them to go back to bed until 7.

At 7, they were all giddy as could be, and we told them to wait in our bedroom until I went down and turned on all the lights and made sure I could find my camera and such. I love how eager they are for the excitement of Christmas morning.

After they'd enjoyed their "Santa" gifts and gone through everything in their stockings (toiletries and candy and such...), we enjoyed a yummy breakfast of scrambled eggs, French toast casserole, bacon and fruit while listening to Christmas tunes. After breakfast and some clean-up, we opened the gifts under the tree and Face-timed with my parents. I was sad not to be with my family in Maryland on this bittersweet Christmas, but technology is a wonderful thing. And we were excited to get to travel to Mike's parents' in the afternoon, once we'd packed and picked up from the morning's excitement. A joyful, blessed Christmas to you and yours!

Christmas Eve

Ignore the creepy baby photo bomb Christmas Eve was very relaxing. I think I went for a long run. That's more than a week ago now, so I'm not quite sure. We just hung out at home and didn't do much to speak of- wrapped some gifts, cleaned some more in the basement, listened to Christmas music. My dad showed me a nice station on Pandora when we were there- "Christmas Choral Classics"- that I've been listening to- very peaceful.

We went to the late afternoon Mass, came home, had some frozen pizza, veggies, and sparkling grape juice, watched Claymation Christmas, read some Christmas books, and put out some treats and celery for Santa and reindeer. The kids were very eager to get into bed so as not to deter the big guy (The big ones know it's Mom and Dad, but it's fun to pretend and talk about why we receive gifts for Jesus' birthday no matter what their behavior. Jesus loves us, simply, and likes to give us good gifts, no matter if we are deserving or not.).