Christmas Eve started the way it (mostly) should, with family! We planned to go to my mom's for breakfast and since we knew we'd have to leave fairly early we all went over in our pajamas. I thought that would be fun. Other than them starting the food much later than I would've liked, it was a fun time. We had great food, we opened some presents, and saw Cindy's family and Andy and Rachel so it was a nice time filled with family, food, and gift-giving.
Other than Cindy's kids not loving these mystery mosaic / color by number things I think everyone liked their gifts well enough. I was hoping to get her family a Groupon for an escape room, but Groupon didn't have the one I found earlier so I figured I'd wait for it to come back to get it, but then I felt too guilty and ended up getting them a gift card to this ifly place that does the surf pool, rock climbing, and the skydiving tunnel thing so I figured they could decide what they wanted to do and have fun with it. I had it delivered to Cindy's email so they can use it whenever.
Pierce also got a tad cranky, he had to miss his first nap of the day, but he actually handled that and all the people pretty well (he just had a sad, tired eyes look for a good portion of it). So once we ate and got to presents we left so we could be home in time to do a quick lunch and put him down for his midday nap.
I took the girls with me to the grocery store to get our weekly shopping done while Larry put Pierce down. I will say in the future I may just do shopping one night in the week, because Christmas Eve is PACKED and too crazy. Luckily the girls stuck with me and it went fairly quickly. Then we went home and I let the girls do an hour of tablet time while I got cookie makings put together and the counter cleaned up a bit. I also got some dishes done so that the sink was clear. Once their tablet time was done we made some snickerdoodles. I rolled out some dough so they could use the cookie cutters and cut some fun shapes out of it. After we all did 3 shapes I decided to roll up the rest as regular cookies and baked them. The shapes kind of got melded together, but we were able to separate them well enough. The regular cookies also expanded a bit into each other, but they were fine enough.
After the cookies cooked and cooled down I let the girls decorate their shapes with some decorative icing, sprinkles, and these unicorn confetti sprinkles. They, of course, all went a little nuts with those and so we had to stop them a while (and huge mess) later. Cara didn't love her cookies (I think she iced them too much), but the rest of us gobbled ours up.
When those were done I started making the cobbler we planned to have with our dinner and sent Larry over to Ridley's to pick up our roast. I was assuming it would be cooked, but it turns out it was just a lump of meat. So since I had JUST put the cobbler in the oven for an hour we decided to just do a regular dinner and cook the roast for Christmas dinner (which is actually what I really wanted anyways so it kind of worked out).
We decided to do our movie night that night and watched the Grinch with Jim Carrey. The girls really liked it and loved their treats. After the movie we got them ready for bed. They were super wired from all the sugar of the day (no surprise) so I told Larry our movie for the night should be the longer of the two options we had so that we could make sure the girls were really asleep.
Once our movie was over I sent Larry down to grab the boxes of wrapped gifts while I printed out these Santa letters I typed up for each of the kids (I had bought a North Pole mailbox decoration and thought it would be fun to have letters delivered). I folded those up and put them in the mailbox and then we started loading the gifts under the tree and filling up the stockings. I went crazy with the gifts, but it was SO fun getting everything set out.
We immediately passed out after that and just waited to hear that the kids were up. They actually stayed in their rooms for quite some time. Around 7 I heard them in the bathroom and decided we could get up and start things. My plan was to do stockings, eat breakfast, then open gifts under the tree so I figured with the extra time we had (before having to get Pierce up) we could do stockings, get Pierce up to do breakfast, and do tree gifts and we'd be right no track.
The girls LOVED seeing everything and were so excited for me to read their Santa letters. They were antsy to open the tree gifts, but I told them we have to eat first (I think opening stockings helped them not be too antsy that they ignored their food). Once breakfast was done everyone ran into the front room and picked their spots to wait for gifts to be handed over. Cara was the quickest to open her gifts, enjoy what it was, and then move on to the next one haha. Gwen and Lucy opened a few and then wanted to just start playing. Pierce, obviously, couldn't open his so he just wanted to play with the toys he saw.
Mom, Will, and Grandma came over a little after lunch to bring their gifts and see what they got. We visited for a while and then they left to grab lunch and visit Andy and Rachel. So by this point we let the kids just play with their toys while Larry and I just tried to stay on top of the mess. Larry grabbed a garbage bag to throw away the wrappings, while I was trying to open all packages and get tags thrown away. I put on A Christmas Story to have on in the background, but then the Packers game came on around 11 so we put that on (what a great win!). It was a bit of an overwhelming day. There were messes all over to stay on top of, there were kids that were getting overwhelmed with everything, there were parents that were trying to keep a clean house. BUT the kids loved every moment of it, they got lots of great things and had fun playing with them, and we got some fun things to check out.
I will say I was expecting to get books, I get some every year, so I was excited to see which ones I got, but I didn't end up getting any. At first I was a little bummed, but then realized I got some good things and I still have quite a few I need to read so I can look at getting more once those are all read. I was actually a little relieved I didn't have my usual "Christmas is just so commercialized and has become all about materialistic wants" feelings. I am pretty excited about the gifts I got people this year and it felt good to feel I did so well.
We ended the day with our roast dinner that turned out to be the most amazing meal I've ever had (with rolls and my cobbler). We relaxed and let the kids play (and didn't get stressed out about the mess). We put the kids down, and then I watched a Netflix Christmas movie and relaxed. It was the best end to the best Christmas day.
Today my plan is to start putting gifts/toys in their spots and get things cleaned up. I'm hoping that by the end of the day everything will be in "their place" and I can start making sure the house is tidied up enough to clean this Friday (which means Christmas decorations have to come down Thursday...so early for me).
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