Christmas Eve

It's Elmo!!

It's been a bit hectic around here this week with the Holidays upon us and some wonderful visitors from up North!  My Dad and stepmom, Ana, as well as my stepbrothers, Niko and Mike, came down to spend Christmas with us!!  It was a wonderful visit and the kids really enjoyed having them here...especially Logan!!

Since this was Nora & Amelia's first Christmas, we really wanted things be perfect.  Well, that's obviously not possible, but I think they had a pretty great time anyway!  They got a TON of presents and lots of love from so many people.  Here is a snippet of our Christmas Eve.  All the pictures are posted on Nora's Shutterfly Site.

We got the girls matching Christmas outfits.  They looked so cute!!  Amelia wouldn't keep the bow in her hair (shocking!) and Nora threw up after having the dress on for about 10 minutes...oh well!  At least we tried.

Marcie's Christmas Bone!

We decided to let the kids each open 1 present, although Logan got to open 2 in the end.  Amelia opened her gift from us.  She liked it!

Logan opened his gift from Abuela first.  We decided to let him open this one because it was a large train set and it was going to be staying at our house, so it just made sense to open it while we were at our house.  We knew he was going to want to put it together immediately.  We were right.  He loved it!

 Nora opened her present from Auntie Mimi, and it was exactly what she wanted.  She may not have known it, but her momma knew she would love it!!  She played with it a ton and was walking all over the house with it.  She even too her first step later in the evening trying to get from me to it!!  Only 1 step, but still!!!  Exciting and scary at the same time!

I'm not sure what the girls are looking at here, but I just think this picture is cute.

We set up for Skype with Shawn's family after dinner so Nora could open their presents.  She got some great stuff!

She got a baby remote...now she can stop eating the real remote :)

  

Logan helped her open the presents from Nana and Papaw.  Thanks!!

After everyone headed home for the night, we set up for Santa.  We put out the cookie tree and eggnog, like usual.

Santa left Nora some great gifts, along with a sweet bike from Grandpa Dave and a few other gifts as well.

Before Nora was born I decided that I didn't want Christmas to be a huge thing with tons of presents from Santa.  She's gonna get presents from her grandparents and other people that love her, so I wanted the presents from Santa to be something more subdued.  I found something on Pinterest that totally reflected what I had been thinking, so I decided to do it and I will continue to do it for any other children I have.

For Christmas every year the children will get from Santa:

Something you want.

Something you need.

Something to wear.

Something to read.

I think that will be plenty.  Plus we will be doing the Salvation Army Angle Tree every year too.  We did it this year and I want it to be something my children help with at take ownership of in their lives.  I want my children to know that they are very lucky and that there are many other children who don't have enough.  Maybe it will help them to appreciate what they have...maybe not.  But I'm going to try.

Christmas pictures coming tomorrow!!