Christmas Eve 2015

We spent the morning and early afternoon on Christmas Eve hanging out at home.  First, I need to document Parker's sweet hiding spot that night!

Reese and Brian went to WalMart to pick up some baking items for me and water for Brian.  He is officially obsessed with the WalMart flavored waters.  We try to buy a ton at a time to limit my trips to WalMart to every two weeks (honestly, we have a great store, I just can't stand WalMart).

I prepped stuffed shells for dinner and made pans of the Pioneer Woman's cinnamon rolls to take to friends!

And the kids decorated cookies.  This is Hudson's cookie that he dubbed "Mistletoe Mountain."  I don't think he actually ate that thing, but this happened under Daddy's supervision!

After we dropped off the cinnamon rolls at our friends' homes, we headed to the fire station to see Pop Pop, Didi, Katie, and Bella.  My dad's newest fire station is right at the beach, and it was in the seventies on Christmas Eve...so it was perfect!

The kids had lots of fun on all the equipment made for the beach.

A little girl + a fire truck = pure happiness.  I think she may have locked herself in!

And they were trying to solve a few mysteries of "how things work" at the station.  The bay doors were the biggest mystery!

And we were able to get one picture of the four of them all kind of looking at the camera before we left.

We came back home for dinner, cookies, Santa's final report on their behavior for the year (makes mental note to "check in" with Santa in June, too), and some of our traditional stories before bed.  Then we waited for Santa to come!

Christmas Eve!

After we got home from Mimi and Baba's, we prepped for Santa's arrival.

But first I'll hit the rewind button to Sunday night.  Brian was starting to feel crummy, so I let him nap for a bit before we went to the Holiday Lights at the Beach.  I thought it would be fun to make Reindeer Food with the kids.

Yeah. Hudson kept "missing" the baggie as he tried to dump oatmeal in,  Finley didn't bother aiming for her baggie.  Instead she dumped her oatmeal in Reese's hair.  Since there was already oatmeal in her hair, Reese decided to throw some sugar in for good measure (so the reindeer could find her obviously).  It was chaos.  But still so fun!

On Christmas Eve, we dumped the reindeer food out for them to find.  Hudson missed out on the fun because he was sleeping.

We set out the cookies and milk for Santa and the carrots for the reindeer, but Finley took off with the carrots!  She can't be trusted!

Once the kids were asleep, Brian got to work getting the presents from us out for the kids.  How adorable are their matching Duffy's?  They really got hooked on Duffy while we were at Disney World.  Wyatt, who is especially into Hidden Mickeys, loves that Duffy's face is one!

While Brian worked on the present mission, I got to work frantically cleaning (because a house should be clean if it's going to be trashed the next day right?), and then got the streamers up on their doors!

While it doesn't keep them in their rooms until we get them, it does at least make it a little harder for them to escape in the middle of the night!

My 12 foot tree.  It is a beast to get up (and I told Brian I wasn't going to do it this year since we would be in Disney World for so long), but goodness gracious it makes me happy!  Brian already had my presents under the tree.  The bottle of wine shows how well he knows me.  Ha!

Santa came!

I love the way my house looks and feels all lit up by twinkle lights!  It always makes me sad to take it down mid January. Ha!