Christmas Morning

I think I say this every year, but Christmas morning with kids is the best. I love being woken up by the kids in the morning and seeing their excited faces, always ready to burst with excitement. They usually can't stop moving or smiling or talking. We made them pause on the stairs to take a photo and the anticipation was killing them. It was fun to have Grandma and Grandpa there to witness the Christmas morning excitement and squeals of joy.

Crappy phone pictures in poor lighting. But I love the excitement.

Discovering the Santa gifts is always lots of fun. The girls love their new dollhouse. It's on wheels and is double sided which makes it easy for everyone to play with at once. We never had room for a big one in our old house and the girls were hoping for one this year. I loved our small "modern architecture" dollhouse so I was glad the new one at least had cute wooden furniture. All of the furniture was individually wrapped so the girls had fun opening it up room by room. Elsa really wanted a talking bird that repeats what you say and Santa brought her one, along with a dog that barks and does back flips (still didn't deliver on the real pet though). Simon loves his new shopping cart and pushes it around the house at dangerous speeds. Oliver asked for a "carpet" (a play mat for his cars) all month long and Santa delivered. Both boys love the Fisher Price ramp, which kept them busy for hours on Christmas day. Simon loved sneaking chocolates from everyone's stockings.

My sister made this custom Apples to Apples game for everyone ("Apples to Olsens") that has pictures of our family and memories from our childhood. It was really fun to look at all the old photos.

Oliver refused to continue opening presents until we set up his marble tower. Which Simon quickly tore apart.

Simon taking a rest. With pants on his head.

Christmas Eve

It was so fun to have my parents here for Christmas. We started off Christmas Eve with baked eggnog french toast in the morning. Yum. We usually go to the zoo on Christmas Eve day but it was pouring rain so we hung around at home, prepared our Christmas Eve dinner, did puzzles, and watched movies. The kids ventured out briefly to play in our little stream. The kids were getting a little crazy in anticipation of Christmas so we headed out in the rain and went to Chick-fil-A for lunch. It was actually a great place to relax and visit while the kids burned off energy in the play place.

We had our traditional Olsen family Christmas Eve dinner and then acted out the nativity. It was a little chaotic as always. Oliver and Elsa fought over the part of Mary (Oliver just wanted to hold the baby the whole time). Simon just wanted to climb in and out of the manger and hit things with the shepherd's staff. But it's always nice to gather around the piano and sing Christmas hymns and read the nativity story, even amongst the chaos. I love carrying on so many traditions with my own children that I experienced as a child.

I made Christmas crackers/poppers for place cards at dinner, similar to the ones I made for Thanksgiving. But this time I hid a clue (and some chocolates) in with the confetti. The clue led the kids to the location of a special gift. Christmas Eve pajamas! Each of their gifts were hiding in a different place in the house. We might have to make this a new tradition. It was pretty fun.

Then it was chocolate fondue time! I had expected the girls to delay going to bed after we finished the fondue, but they were eager to set out cookies for Santa and get to bed so he would come. We read "Twas the Night Before Christmas" and Amelia, Elsa and Oliver all slept in the same room. Ben and I stayed up with my parents and watched "It's a Wonderful Life" while doing some last minute wrapping and assembling. Ben and my dad attempted to assemble this huge ride on tractor/construction toy I got at Costco for the boys several weeks earlier, but it was missing multiple key parts so we had to give up on it. I knew the boys would have loved it so that was disappointing, but luckily they didn't know anything was missing and were thrilled with everything else they got.