This Christmas seemed especially fun, though nothing like I had imagined. If you know me, you know that I love Christmas traditions and decorating and celebrating with our kiddos in fun ways. This year was a bit of an exception, which was actually really good for me. I let go of the things I normally “couldn’t” live without doing around Christmastime and took hold of the moments we did have, the fun activities we did do and enjoyed them to the fullest.

Each year we open a new pair of Jammies on Christmas Eve. Silly, sick yet sweet boys in their Superhero Jammies!

I adore this photo (above)(Christmas Jammies the past 3 years … how time flies!) Christmas Eve we did do one of our family traditions: Christmas lights!

It was pretty hilarious. A must share moment. Family traditions: you picture such lovely, smiling and giggling kiddos, under-the-misteltoe momma and daddy, perfection, really… this can happen. However, this wasn’t the case for us Christmas Eve. We left for our annual Christmastime tradition (we’re such heathens, Christmas lights over Christmas Eve candlelight services ;)) …

Stopped and put our a new Starbucks gift card to use, kid’s hot cocoas and Carmel Brûlée Latte’s (us) are a must for the tradition to be complete.

By the time we hit our first house, Chase (who was coughing the entire time) was suddenly quiet and sound asleep. We knew it was “bad” when we realized he hadn’t even taken a sip of his cocoa!

Shailo, on the other hand, had CHUGGED his cocoa a block in. Minutes later the sugar high starts (hot cocoa is a special treat, because my kid’s are CRAZY when they have sugar!) We visited an entire street that’s popular in Fort Collins and took Shai out of his carseat as we slowly drove along.

Putting Shailo back into his carseat was an adventure :) We decided to still try and drive around to see lights, as one child slept soundly and the other was screaming his little head off.

Ted and I just had to laugh. We then remembered the 2nd year we did this as a family and how we wanted to sing Christmas’y songs and our 2-year-old Chaseyboy would bellow out “WONDER PETS, WONDER PETS… WE’RE ON OUR WAY. TO HELP A FRIEND AND SAVE THE DAY….”

THESE are the moments I cherish. Even when they aren’t filled with what we’d pictured in our heads.

 

Christmas morning the kiddos woke bright and early. 4 am to be exact and it wasn’t because of Santa, but because of stinkin’ ole jet lag. :) It was really fun though, Ted and the kids and I enjoyed our own little family gift exchange and time.

 

Christmas Day 2013

I hope you all had a Merry Christmas and have a wonderful New Year too!