Christmas 2015

This year was Skye's first Christmas and it was Finn's first Christmas where he really found the excitement of it all. We did a handful of special things throughout the season, and it really was fun having things pre-planned to do together. Something that I definitely want to carry into the new year.

We made cinnamon ornaments, you know the ones that hold their smell for years? Love em.

We saw Christmas lights...

We listened and danced to Christmas music.

On the 23rd we started a new tradition of pulling out our mattresses to watch a Christmas-y movie and sleep under the Christmas lights. I heard of this idea from Ashley on her blog, Under the Sycamore. They call it Christmas Adam (because Adam comes before Eve, hah) and I thought it sounded like such a fun family tradition.

Finn ended up kicking Rob out of the bed while sleeping so he ended up on the couch, hah, but it was fun.

We read about Jesus' birth and celebrated his birthday with a big blue cupcake to which Finn told me "Jesus no have some...only Finn". Lol, seriously can't make this stuff up. We're working on that whole sharing idea...Lord help us.

We baked cookies with red and green m&m's.

We definitely made some sweet memories while also sometimes wrangling in a tantrum-y, bossy toddler. I have a feeling we won't remember all the reasons for timeouts. Oh the parenting adventures. :D

Christmas morning Finn slept until 8:30am and he was super excited to see the "pwesents" under the tree. Besides me having a bit of a tantrum about the amount of dog hair already on our new rug, it was a sweet morning before heading out to my mom's to celebrate with them.

Skye slept for the majority of the morning and then we look over at one point and her eyes were wide open like "hey! what's going on over there!"

We let Finn play with his new stuff as he wanted. At first in my head I was thinking lets open them all! But then it was kinda nice letting him just take his time and then after checking his new item out he'd go pick another present. A favorite gift of his that I'm so glad we picked up last minute...a box of kinetic sand to do his digging in...

I told Rob he was in the above pic and to look happy! Hah, can you tell? Lol...it cracks me up in some candid shots how our faces can look like we're so unhappy but it's just our faces, ya know? Hah, okay moving on...

Yay, a Thomas train! (that ended up being defective and I'm missing the receipt!) Wahhh!

Finn's impression of the intro "welcome to the Island of Sodor!" followed by his biggest grin like the TV show. Cracks us up.

Whoa!! It's a box!

Finn's big present was a wooden train set equipped with tunnels as he requested. It was such a funny experience having him request anything at all.

While daddy assembled the train, I got Skye out of her swing to open her gifts.

She was (and is) so entranced by this little knit rattle!

Her little knit doll was too precious to pass up as well. Yeah, if Land of Nod was located here, I'd be putting in an application fo sho.

We celebrated Christmas Eve with Rob's side of the family and of course I forgot to take pictures as well as at my mom's but it was all so nice. Heck, we even at one point sang Christmas carols around the piano! (Thanks to Grandmars for orchestrating that!)

Hoping you all had a merry Christmas. With just a few hours left of 2015, wishing you all a happy new year! 2016! Whoa, that sounds way too futuristic.