Christmas Day - 2015

We did several fun Christmas activities leading up to Christmas that I really want to share here on the blog, however I think I'll start here with Christmas morning at our house and go from there!

Christmas this year (like the last 2 years) was spent at home in our pajamas and we LOVED it!! Jake and I always said that when we had kids, we wanted to spend Christmas day at home and thankfully we've gotten everyone in our family to jump on board with that. So we spend a whole day with each of our families on a day around Christmas and then Christmas day is spent at home with the kids, and it's wonderful.

Our "Santa" tradition is that Santa brings one unwrapped gift for each of the kids on Christmas Eve and fills their stockings with goodies as well. We wrap the rest of the gifts and those are from us. 

We also set cookies, milk, orange juice and a carrot out for Santa and his reindeer this year. This was the first year we made sure to start this tradition because I felt like Jackson was actually old enough to get it. He is the one that requested Santa have orange juice as well (not sure where he got that from) and the carrot for the reindeer. :-) Christmas Eve was spent at my Aunt and Uncle's house and while we were there the kids decorated cookies, so we used those cookies for Santa. :-)

So when the kids woke up Christmas morning, the first thing they saw were their Santa gifts and they were both very excited!

 Santa brought Avery a cute little pink kitchen and he brought Jackson a Paw Patrol Look-Out!

He also filled their stockings with a few goodies. 

I decided to start a new tradition this year where Santa brought each of the kids a special ornament for the tree. It was in each of their stockings. Jackson got a Ninja Turtle ornament and Avery got a Minnie Mouse ornament. Each ornament was of something they are into right now. I may use a Sharpie and write the year on them somewhere. I thought we'd use them on our tree until the kids are old enough to have a tree of their own and they can take their collection with them. :-)

After checking out what Santa brought them, they moved on to opening the presents from us. :-) It was so much fun watching them open presents this year! Jackson was so excited to see what he got and with every present opened, Avery exclaimed "Wow!!" It was the cutest thing ever!! Thankfully we got it all on video, just as we do every year!

Avery trying to put on a pair of jammies she just opened. Ha!

Big brother helping Avery open a present. :-) He's so sweet.

Jackson opening his legos. He said this was his very favorite gift this year!

Avery giving one of her new Little People Princesses a kiss. :-)

Avery hugging her new Giant Minnie Mouse. This Minnie Mouse is taller than Avery is and she absolutely loves her. I'm pretty sure this was her favorite gift this year. At nap time that afternoon, I had to rock Avery and Giant Minnie on my lap. Ha! That was interesting.

This play-doh set was also a big hit!

After opening presents, the kids played with several of their toys while Jake and I put a few of them together. We also watched the Disney World Christmas Parade!

 

Jake made a big breakfast at lunch time and as he was making that, his Mom stopped by for a little while to see what the kids got for Christmas. 

After lunch, I put Avery down for a nice long nap and we watched National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation. We also played a few of Jackson's new board games with him.

Later that afternoon, Jake's mom headed over to his older brother's house to hang out with them and Jackson and I built a little city with of his new legos! We had the best time building it and he said multiple times how much fun it was to build that city and how much he loved me for helping him! So. Stinkin. Sweet!!!

Once Avery woke up from her nap the kids played a little more with their new toys and we watched a few Christmas cartoons. 

Then Jake fixed us dinner and the kids ate in their new little desks that we got them!

It was such a fun filled day, one that went by way too fast! 

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas!

Trimming the Tree and Decking the Halls

Decorating the tree this year was so much fun. The kids are both at great ages for "helping" and they were both eager to do so.

Avery was so cute. She is always willing to say "cheese" for the camera.

I managed to snap this picture of both of them in front of the tree with my phone before we got started decorating. :-)

Every year we let our tree sit in a bucket of water to get a good drink over night and then Jake brings it in the next day for me to decorate. I always get it trimmed up and put the tree skirt around it and take a picture so that I have an un-decorated picture and then a decorated picture. This was just something I did the first year and have continued ever since. This year, with having all of our stuff in storage, we had to try and dig through our storage locker to find our Christmas boxes. We found the 2 I thought we would need that had all the stockings, ornaments and lights in them so we grabbed those 2 and made our way back home to decorate. Once we got home and I started going through stuff, I realized we were missing something... the tree skirt. Jake's Great Grandma made each of her grandchildren a tree skirt several years ago, even before Jake and I got married. Jake's mom held on to it and gave it to us the first Christmas after we were married. It's really special and means a lot to us. I'm so bummed we didn't get it from storage, but we made due with this Christmas blanket I happened to have in one of the boxes.

I put the lights on and then Jackson and Avery helped me hang the ornaments on the tree. Avery is still a little bit to small to really help but she tried her best and it was really cute. Jackson is really at a great age for helping. This was really the first year he could actually help, we just had to work on getting each ornament on a different branch. Ha.

They really enjoyed helping... that is until Jackson had been unwrapping ornaments for quite a while and finally said 'I'm tired from this" and headed back to watch t.v. in our bed. Ha!

Once we finished up, Avery was ready and willing to take a picture in front of our tree. Jackson... not so much. 

And here is our 2015 cute little Douglas Fir all decorated.

And a picture of my little nativity set. I've had this since around 2003. I used it as a centerpiece on the table this year along with a cute little table runner that my sister made a couple years back.

So that wraps up our Christmas decorations this year. I wasn't quite sure how a tree and any of our decorations would fit in our condo, or if we'd even be able to get to our Christmas boxes in storage, but it all worked out and I'm pretty pleased with how it all came together. :-)

And just for fun, here are all of our Christmas Trees from 2007-2015!!

Our 2015 Christmas Tree

This past Saturday, we took the kids to our favorite little Christmas Tree stand for the 9th year in a row. Sullivan's Tree Farm is a local tree lot that we've gone to every year since the first Christmas after we got married. They always have beautiful trees and we love going there every year.

We are still in the tiny little condo so we knew we wanted to get a small tree. In the past we've always gotten a Noble Fir, but this year they weren't able to get any Noble Firs. They order them from Oregon and they were unable to get them this year. :-( So we asked for the next closest tree to a Noble Fir and they said a Douglas Fir was very similar. They happened to have the cutest, most perfect little Douglas Fir there and it didn't take us long to decide this was the perfect tree for us this year.

It was just the perfect size for the kids too!

The weather couldn't have been more perfect. Sunny and 70 degrees! I'll take it.

This was Avery's first year to actually get to run around in the trees. She thought it was pretty fun!

Jackson brought along the Hungry Hungry Caterpillar stuffed animal from school to have his picture taken with. :-) His class is passing around the caterpillar from friend to friend and while he is with each child we have to write a little paragraph about what we did with him while he was visiting us. It was a fun little homework assignment. :-)

So we got our little tree trimmed up and headed home to let it sit in a bucket of water over night on our patio. Then Sunday evening Jake brought it in and the kids and I decorated it. I'll post all about the decorating tomorrow. :-)

Do you all have a tradition of going to a favorite tree stand or tree farm?

Our 2015 Christmas Card

Our Christmas Cards went out in the mail earlier this week, so I thought I'd go ahead and share it here as well! 

Merry Christmas!

Love, The Smiths

 

What Jackson is Getting For Christmas This Year

Jackson was also fun to buy for this year! We tried to scale back a little bit on his gifts because we had just gotten him the Power Wheels Camaro for his birthday and that was a rather expensive gift. However, I wanted him to at least have the same amount of items to open on Christmas morning as Avery has. So we just tried to make sure his gifts weren't quite as expensive and luckily he's still at an age where we can get away with that.;-)

I think this will probably be his gift from Santa. It's a Paw Patrol Headquarters! He loves these kinds of toys and he loves Paw Patrol so I'm sure this will be a hit.

Like I said in Avery's gift post, Jackson also got a cool desk chair for coloring at or eating a snack. I really think they will love these and they'll come in handy too. :-)

One thing Jackson has really been into lately is legos! He loves building with legos, so we got him this giant box of legos for Christmas.

And because he LOVES playing with play-doh, we got him this whole play-doh fun factory!

He's at a good age to introduce board games. He got Hi-Ho Cherry-O for his birthday and really enjoys playing that, so we decided to get him a few age-appropriate board games for Christmas. We got him Connect 4, Trouble and Hungry Hungry Hippo!

He's also getting a couple pair of pajamas. Sadly, he's starting to grow out of his 5t pajamas and I had to buy him "big kids" sized pajamas this time!

He's also getting a suitcase for our big Disney trip next year which I think he will really like. I think he will get a kick out of having his "own" suitcase!

And then lastly, this will be something for both kids to open. We got them a dual portable dvd player for the car. We thought this would be great for the long drive to Disney World next year and any other trips we decide to take. :-)

I'm so excited for Christmas morning this year. I think the kids are both at such great ages! It will be a lot of fun opening presents!