Christmas 2023

Christmas was a great one this year, as usual. I was happy to get my shopping done early, but I was definitely wrapping things completely last minute, but it was fine (it gave me an excuse to watch more movies to wrap to, I actually squeezed in a few more Hallmark ones than I had planned).

This year we had Christmas Eve breakfast at Mom's. It was really good and it was so nice to visit with them. Luckily, my mom said she'd have everything so we didn't need to bring anything. We could just come and eat their food and visit haha. After nap time we did Bingo for the Christmas Eve gifts at our house. Cara got her Giga Pet and said "that's all I wanted for Christmas and I already got it" haha. Gwen got a color by number picture (which I wasn't sure how she'd feel about it, but she ended up loving it), Lucy got some Bluey stuffed animals, Pierce got a busy board that he loves. I got Larry a Switch Game, and Larry got me a thing that helps hold drinks on the couch. After dinner we drove around the neighborhood to check out decorations. I absolutely love that tradition and look forward to it every year..

Doing some Christmas shopping at Traverse

Anyways, we got the kids down for bed and then Larry and I watched a movie and waited for them to fall asleep. We started grabbing the gifts out and then I found a whole bag of things I forgot to wrap...whoops! Luckily, we had enough for the kids to be happy. We also put out the stair slide we got so they could have fun with that in the morning. I was excited to put out the stockings since I felt I got a lot of fun things for them, then I realized I didn't do stockings for Larry and me haha. I got Larry some beef sticks and some masks for myself, but that was it. So ours were pathetic haha.

I just love getting our Santa picture each year!

What's funny is once we put the gifts out I started to wonder if I got them enough. I know I did, I saw it. I also know I get VERY overwhelmed VERY easily with too many gifts so I felt like I was being good this year, but seeing everything out it just felt like it wasn't enough.

Cara's school concert was so cute!
I just love her!

Then came Christmas morning. I made sure to get up before the kids, put some Christmas music on Alexa, and then let the kids down to see it all (I don't think they noticed the slide we put out haha). I love starting the morning with our stockings and the kids seemed to love things they got in those so we let them play with that stuff for a little bit while Larry made us some waffles for breakfast (that turned out SO good).

After breakfast we started on gifts. So much wrapping was thrown around, there were so many "oohs and ahhs", and such big messes. But so many smiles at the same time! We let the kids just play at that point. That was when my overwhelming feelings took over and I was NOT about ready to try and clean or contain any of the toys. I planned to just let the kids go crazy. After nap time, Nana and Boomer came down to bring their gifts. The kids got LOTS of great things. Larry and I got some good gifts too, mom likes being creative with gifts and it shows. 

The rest of the day was playing and relaxing. I'd get moments of wanting to clean up, but would do it for about 5 minutes and then give up for a couple hours, clean for 5 minutes and then give up...and so on, and so forth haha. I have no idea when we'll get it all cleaned up, but for now we'll let the kids have their fun. That's what Christmas is all about....kind of. I'm just glad the day is done, we all had fun, got some good gifts, and now Larry and the kids have a couple weeks off to do whatever while I get some much needed work done.

And on that note, Happy Holidays to anyone reading this!!