Christmas 2018

As always Christmas comes and goes so fast! That said I feel like Christmas Eve was the longest day of my life. I was so excited this year we didn’t have any large gifts with a million pieces to assemble or requiring heavy duty manual labor. So I thought we would for sure be in bed by 1am... nope. Ron and I were up until 3:30am wrapping presents and Christmasing. 

Christmas morning came and went; I feel like the kids were happy I hope it was memorable. Ron and I actually had 2 different gifts for each other that were identical. LOL Too funny we both got each other a video monitoring doorbell and a hygiene tool in our stockings. I guess great minds think alike!

Mason

Scout stuff

Hiking Backpack

Sleeping bag/hat

7” tablet and case

Large nerf gun

Noah

Pokémon stuffed animal squirtle

Dogman Book’s 5 & 6

Ninjago shark lego set

Minecraft video game

Disney infinity video games/characters

Large nerf gun

Callie

Tablet 

Art supplies 

Stroller

Hatchimal

April for weeks now has been saying that she wanted a pink Unicorn. She never said anything else. I love that little sweet girl. My Dad gives the kids these stuffed horses from Wells Fargo and we have collected about half a dozen over the years. April collects all of them, lines them up to brush them and talk to them. She will do this for up to an hour at a time. It’s adorable. She even gets my water spray bottle to spray their mane and brush it. I think she does that because that’s how I do her hair. 

Pink Unicorn amazon

You Spirit Horse /lucky doll 

2 Unicorns one of course pink

Babydoll

Hatchimal

Family gifts:

3-day Disneyland passes 

Hover-board

Christmas Pictures

I have a problem, it's an addiction really. I LOVE taking pictures. 

I guess I should say I love getting that ONE magical picture where everything falls into place. Where all of the kids portray their adorable personalities and perfect smiles. AND I'm willing to take a MILLION pictures to get that one. That being said I am not a photographer I could probably save myself a lot of grief by taking some photography classes but I don't. 

Family pictures are usually so stressful and time consuming so we only do them every other year.  I found this private company that charges a small fee for staging winter scenes, you to take your own pictures in an assigned 30 min window. So we threw on some Christmas Jammies and went to town. Sadly, the only available time they had was 4pm on a Friday which is why Ron didn't make the photo shoot. I thought he would be happy about that but secretly I think he was a little bummed we didn't get a family pic of us all. 

Four years ago I did something similar with Mason, Noah and Callie. I was hoping to recreate this picture: (and I think I came pretty close to it) I love that April is wearing the same pj's as Callie in these pictures. ;)

Christmas Piano Recital

Every few years my mom does a sing-a-long Christmas piano recital. It's surprisingly really fun to sit in a room full of strangers and sing Christmas Carols. It's also a very good experience for the children to learn to accompany music and follow a conductor.

Mason played the Hymn The First Noel, 

Noah O Come, O Come, Emmanuel, 

and Callie played Away in a Manger. 

I really love and appreciate that my mom lets them be part of her recital even though they aren't her piano students.

Noah's First Band Concert

I was shocked when Noah came home from school one day and asked if he could join the band. He does not enjoy playing the piano in fact he fights me on it a lot. Even though he complains about it he is pretty good at the piano and has always been very responsible about his practicing and progress. Lately he also has not really been into sports (which I am totally ok with as long as he is getting exercise and being active). He isn't the most adventurous kid, as in he doesn't like to do something unless he knows he will be good at it or knows exactly how to do it. I guess to word it better he doesn't like to try new things (except food, he is my BEST eater!) So when he came home with a desire to play in the band I was super excited and nervous all in one. I have never been a "band mom" so this was new to me and of course I texted a couple good friends with boys in band for advice and input. Noah told me he wanted to play percussion, more specifically the snare drum. I am still laughing to myself at his reason for choosing this instrument and I quote "I want to play the drums because they aren't mouth instruments" Noah is incredibly germ phobic. He could be dehydrated with cracked bleeding lips in a million degree weather but he STILL wouldn't accept water from you if he know you had taken a drink already.

His first band concert was a success! I am so proud of him and really enjoyed listening to them play. It's really fun to see your kid excel and be excited about a new skill and talent.