Christmas

Here I go, tackling the daunting task of posting about our Christmas's - downloading dozens of photos, organizing them, and selecting the few to share. Christmas is fun because of all the special traditions we look forward to, within our own family and with our extended family, spread out over the course of several days. There's the traditional meals, dinners, social time, church service, present opening...but this year, many of those anticipated traditions did not happen. All sorts of last minute circumstances came up that had us throwing most of those traditions out the window! We sure did have to adapt and be flexible this year!

First, Matt received a last-minute call to work over the holidays so he had to forfeit his flight and couldn't come with Amy, so Matt was ABSENT from our family festivities. Already things were not going to be the same. (We missed you Matt!!!) Then, Grandma A came down with The Stomach Bug on Christmas Eve - that meal and gift opening was CANCELLED. Next Aaron's body gave up the fight against his sinus infection and our Christmas Day with the "F" family was abruptly SHORTENED. The day after Christmas was the "A" family celebration, but without Aaron and Matt,  most of the celebrating was POSTPONED. Finally on Friday we wrapped up the "A" family Christmas with our traditional fondue dinner, but instead of Grandma's house it was at ours, also not traditional. Whew, what a week it was! At least we got our traditional Overnight Rolls breakfast one morning, right girls?! Can I get an Amen?!

Thankfully, there is something that NEVER changes each Christmas, like celebrating Jesus coming to Earth as a baby to save us with his grace and love. We never forgot about that this Christmas! And above all, we gave thanks for the many blessings given to us this past year from our Father. We are thankful for all the wonderful memories made this year, even if they weren't "traditional"!!

 Our Christmas break kicked off on Saturday with our 2nd Annual Michigan State basketball game at the Breslin Center. Way to bring a win, Spartans! 

 And while we watched basketball, the girls baked Christmas cookies with Grandma A.

Hanging/fixing the angel on top of the tree

Christmas Eve

This is the day that dinner and presents with Grandma and Grandpa A was cancelled last minute - 

a big let-down for all of us. It ended up all working out because with all of the excitement and anticipation from the past few days Kayla was more than ready to head to bed early. Christmas Eve is an easy evening to convince Kayla its later than what it really is, and with the anticipation of Santa coming, bedtime is an easy sell - too easy. Kayla was in bed at 6:45!! Almost two hours early!!! We couldn't believe it! She was so eager to go to bed! 

Milk and cookies for Santa

 A plate with two cookies? Sitting on the floor? Khloe helped herself to one of those cookies! We replaced the half-eaten cookie with a new one.

That evening, Kayla announced to us that she would get up on her own and run downstairs (something that she never does) first thing in the morning to see if Santa came. She was true to her word! Aaron and I chuckled when we heard her footsteps in the dark running down the stairs in the morning and a few seconds later running back up the stairs and into our room. We were all up by then!

Santa came!

Since Thanksgiving, Kayla has been cutting and pasting wish list items onto paper; it is up to 5 pages front and back. Although, her top wish list items changed daily and in the last few weeks, it was really hard to keep up with everything she was adding. Kayla was under the assumption that if an item was added to your wish list than you automatically received it... if you were good. One random item that came up in the days before Christmas was a new doll house, she said her other one was old (only 12 months!). She saw the large present next to the tree and said "I got a doll house!" Then she changed her mind and said it was a sled - that time she was right! Her top wish list item, which hadn't changed over time, was a Real Magic Wand - "not a fake one, a real one". There were some things she needed to get done with her real magic wand - fly to Iowa, become a mermaid, a fairy and a pop star, find out Tikky's real age, and build a fence around the deck to protect Khloe from falling. There's SOOO many things you could do with real magic! We talked to her about magic and real and not-real things, in hopes of not setting her up for disappointment when there was no real magic wand under the tree, but Aaron really wanted to make something work for her. If you search long and hard enough, you can  find this:

This magic wand can "magically" turn off and on the lamps in her room. This "magic" seems to satisfy her, although she still talks about wishing she could turn into a pop star along with being able to accomplish some other important tasks. We also overheard her say later on Christmas Day, to no one in particular, and with slight disappointment in her voice, "I can't believe a magic wand needs a battery". In the end, the magic wand does not leave her side!

Christmas, continued

Christmas morning, at home

 Trying it all on - the new gymnastics outfit, new pants, a new headband and an archery set - not all necessarily meant to go together

Kayla's favorite Santa gifts: Holiday Barbie, archery set, and the magic wand.

More and different (and quite the combination!) of trying new presents on - gymnastics, skirt, tights and socks, of course all while shooting arrows

 Khloe even got into it too

 "F" family Christmas

 Playing her new Hiss game

 Khloe's gift from Grandpa and Grandma F - a 7' Jump-O-Lene! What a fun gift for the girl who loves to jump and climb and fall!

 There's not many places a 7' jump-o-lene can fit, but it provides endless entertainment! We call it "the babysitter". They entertain themselves in it for hours. 

Christmas, continued

Christmas with the "A" family

These are just Khloe's presents, left for last since she was napping

 (If you notice numerous photos throughout several posts of Khloe without pants, its because there are. For some reason, she thought it was more fun to go pantless and would take them off.)

Kayla's craft bin

 Overnight rolls for breakfast - some traditions will never change! Even Khloe enjoyed her first rolls, sitting on the floor - you can just see her head peeking above the counter.

 Fondue dinner

How my sisters spend most of their time at our house - in front of the fireplace

Oh happy day!

 Thanks for the laughs, Aunt Amy!

Snow!

Yea! Our first real BIG snowfall in two years! Last winter we didn't have an opportunity to get all dressed up in snow gear and go sledding because it only snowed once and it was all melted by the next day. We were hoping this year would be different, which is why we're sure Santa brought Kayla a sled under the Christmas tree. Well, we only had to wait one day - on Dec 26 we received 9" of fresh powder! I'm not sure Daddy enjoyed snow blowing our driveway (or maybe he secretly did) and the neighbors, but I know Kayla loved it! She played outside with Asia, Gabrielle and Gina for five hours (minus a quick warm lunch indoors)!

Our deck and pond are somewhere under all that snow

This is all little sister can do when all the big kids are playing outside, just sit and watch.

Kayla and Gabrielle were snowboarding down the stairs

 When you don't have a hill in your backyard, you improvise. Deck stairs covered in 9" of snow make a GREAT sledding hill. The girls were laughing and screaming for hours, so it had to be fun. At one point I heard Kayla say, "This is awwwwwwesome!" It's so heart-warming to see her creating wonderful Christmas vacation memories with friends. 

Trying to get a birds-eye perspective
Taken from upstairs bedroom window

And the next day she had a play-date at Abby's, a school/church friend's home, to go sledding on their HUGE backyard hill! She has been one tired, happy girl!

Fresh Air

On a Christmas Eve walk with my baby girl

Christmas break begins

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

It's the BIG sigh of relief welcoming Christmas vacation for the next 17 days! It has officially begun! Whew, so much to look forward to... sleeping in, mornings in pajamas, big long breakfast's, cartoon mornings, watching movies, playing games, cuddling by the fire, being silly, whatever. Whatever we want. All Kayla is looking forward to is having at least one whole day in pajamas. I told her I would be more than happy to make that happen, and probably more than once.

This week leading up to Christmas seemed to last forever!!!! Ever have one of those weeks? Kayla missed two days of school, one for pink eye and one for a stomach bug... which Khloe gave to all of us. I was off one day from work from it and Aaron was off work the next day from it along with Kayla, and then Khloe caught it again... and all this happened in four days! At least we can say that we are thankful we are now healthy, have our sickness behind us and can look forward to welcoming family into town and our home, and spending the holidays with those we love.

We kicked off our break with Kayla's Kindergarten Christmas program at school. I could not have left work any earlier or any quicker than what I did, I was so excited to get there. My first responsibility was to start making frosting for the 90 gingerbread houses 90 Kindergartner's were about to make. Do you know how much frosting it takes for 90 Kindergartner's to make 90 gingerbread houses? I don't know either, but I know it took nine Kitchenaid mixers running for 45 minutes straight. It was probably at least 54lbs of powdered sugar and 162 eggs that we mixed! You can see the beautiful results below.

Today also marks a key moment for us... we are owners of a video camera! No more little camera, no more camera phone, no more iPad camera. I was having a moment of panic last night knowing that this would be Kayla's FIRST and ONLY Kindergarten Christmas program, and the thought of not having the ENTIRE length of the program on video would haunt me forever, not to mention the girl's first Christmas opening presents together. So Aaron said he would get one first thing in the morning. I'm so happy we have our first video camera (Well, second. We got one for our wedding ions ago.) to capture all the big moments happening, and yet to happen.

As you can imagine, watching 90 Kindergartner's sing their hearts out to an array of Christmas songs would bring anyone to happy tears. Happy Christmas Vacation!

 Four Kindergarten classes

Kayla is on the left, 2nd row, next to Addison

"Before he flies away!"

 After the Christmas program we went to the cafeteria to make gingerbread houses

 There were dozens of toppings to choose from!

 Addie wanted to eat her finished product

 Completed masterpieces

 We LOVE Mrs Prout! We can't say enough great things about her! She is a wonderful person and a fantastic teacher. We are so fortunate that we got her as Kayla's teacher!

 Our Christmas tradition continued with exchanging and opening presents with Addie and Missy

 Hedbanz is a game Addie bought for Kayla

Khloe just woke up from her nap and was still unsure of everything

 Kayla's favorite present: her new Couture Angel Barbie doll

 Khloe, the Artist

With her new Color Wonder light-up paint palette

 And the evening continued with neighbors - the girls put on a show for us and then we ended the night with a dance party!