Merry Christmas

Christmas this year was filled with lots of the normal busyness that comes with the season but we also had an added stress of a baby that could come at any time!  Brett was also VERY busy at work and so that always makes things a little more stressful! Christmas Eve we decided to do our big dinner since we didn't know when baby was coming. Christmas Eve came and still no baby.  Thankfully we had most of the wrapping done but still had to work on some last minute "assembly".  That ended up taking WAY longer than we realized.  So Christmas morning we were a little tired to say the least.  The kids were so excited…we told the kids they couldn't wake us before 7am.  We didn't think the oldest would be the one to wake the youngest up this year but yup that's what happened.  It is so fun to see their faces when we come downstairs.  A few favorites this year was a bike for Giselle, iPods for Jolie and Jillian. Camera for Jolie and Genna and bow and arrow for all of them…the big family present from Santa was a ping pong table. It was a great Christmas day. I am bummed I never took pictures of all our decorations. This year we did 3 trees and lights outside. It was quite festive around here.  That night we went to dinner at our friends home The Sorensen's.  It was delicious and fun company. They have 3 boys so Jacob is in heaven being there. Our older girls are too! :)

 This is the tree when you first walk in the front door. We call it the "pretty tree".

 This tree was new this year. It was a "Dr. Seuss theme".  I really had fun finding stuff for this tree. The kids really liked decorating it too.

 Here is our real tree which did get decorated too. This one always gets all the homemade ornaments and yearly ornaments. A very fun FHE tradition.

 I thought it would be fun to "make" Christmas plates this year. I forgot though that I was 9 months pregnant and Brett was of course going to be working late since this is his crazy time of year. Why I thought I could handle it by myself is beyond me…but I did. It was a tad stressful at times and not exactly how I envisioned it. Now I can look at them and say Yay I'm so glad they made these but that night I was just ready to call it quits!

 We went to Hinsdale's annual Christmas walk this year and met up with some friends that live by the train station, the husband actually works with Brett at his firm.  It was FREEZING cold. I bundled them up a ton but it was just too cold and we could barely stand to see Santa. So we left there and went to our friends house where we made individual pizza's.

 Aren't their little Chef hats and apron's adorable? It was so fun and yummy.

 We found a cut your own tree down really close to our house..so close I thought the gps was wrong but nope a tree farm right in the middle of a city. Luckily the trunk wasn't too thick and we got it down and strapped to the car in no time!

I'm so glad I checked my camera phone, I had forgotten so many were on their!