Christmas

With the kids getting older, we are really liking being home for Christmas morning. Because of that, we stayed home again this year, but left for Utah on Christmas afternoon.

 

It just wouldn't feel like Christmas though if we were celebrating all alone, so we celebrated with some of our amazing friends here! We hosted this year's Christmas Eve bash. We had a super yummy dinner, and then the kids acted out the nativity scene.

 

Here is our cute cast of characters at the end of the nativity. We definitely improvised on some of them. I think Gavin was supposed to be one of the animals, but he wanted to wear his cowboy hat.

 

 
All of the families that came have the same tradition of opening PJs on Christmas Eve so we did that all together and caught some cute pictures of each of the families.
 
The Coon family:

The Dixon family:

 
The Saunders family:

 
Our crazy family (angry birds PJs):

The Taylor family:

 
After everyone left, we got a phone call from the Coon's. They said that Santa had just stopped by their house for a quick visit and wondered if we wanted him to stop by our house too. The kids were soooo shocked when he knocked on the door. It was such a fun way to end the night!!
 
Easton and Santa:

Gavin and Santa:

 
Dylan and Santa: 

Luckily Dylan is super thoughtful and remembered that we needed to leave out some milk and cookies for Santa for when he stopped by. How could we forget?!?

The boys were so excited on Christmas morning! I love that their excitement is so contagious. I'm a mean mom - I made them stop on the stairs for a quick picture before they could go see what Santa left for them:

Luckily Santa knows how much our boys LOVE to be outside. They each got some sort of fun ride-on toy. Dylan got a fancy two legged scooter thing. Easton got what he calls a "drifting bike" and Gavin got a bike with training wheels. Just our luck that we were hit with a HUGE snowstorm during the night. Dad (aka: Mr. Wonderful), was so awesome to go out early and get the driveway cleared off so they had somewhere to test out their new toys.

Easton on his new drifting bike. It really is fun! I've tried it:

 

Dylan on his new scooter:

Gavin was so excited about the treats in his stocking!

Here is the crew after they just acted out the nativity scene at G&G Stocking's house. It was fun to let Christmas last a little longer.