Here are the kids finding their ornaments that I had made in their stockings on Christmas Eve...
Matt's thrilled.
Christmas morning we slept until about 9.
Then we gathered in Ben's room and Andy read the Christmas story to us...
Then we all trekked down to the basement for the opening of gifts...and the taking of pics in front of the tree...Ben rarely cooperates for this!
Then it began...
For years, we have used laundry baskets to contain the chaos and keep everyone's acquisitions separate.
It may look funny, but it works for us :)
It took Andy longer than usual to realize we needed trash bags...he's one of those dads that likes to keep the clutter down during the opening :)
A couple of his gifts included some cleaner that he really likes ;) and some blue light glasses for when he's looking at a screen for a long time...
For weeks before Christmas, Josh had been working secretively on gifts for everyone.
It was quite a process involving photoshop and spray paint, and original artwork...
After stockings and before the rest of the gifts he wanted us to "open" his gift to us.
He ended up leading us on a treasure hunt throughout the house and culminated in a special, thoughtful gift for each of us.
He was so creative...it was just so fun to see him get excited about putting it together and giving it to us that morning.
During all of this, Ben was content playing with the birds from the fireplace decor...
Ben checking out his new Elmo DVD from Josh...
We were all so impressed with how creative Josh had been!
It was such a fun addition to our Christmas morning :)
Other gifts...
Andy and I always write silly names on our gifts to each other....I got a kick out of "Flubby Hubby"!
About 3 days before Christmas we had someone drop off a big, heavy box anonymously on our doorstep.
All it said was Merry Christmas so I had the boys stick it under the tree.
Christmas morning, near the end of our opening, Josh decided to open it up. I believe while he was doing so, Andy was joking about how it was probably something perishable and we should have opened it right away. Well, lo and behold, it was a box full of breakfast items with a cute poem about how in the craziness of the Christmas season sometimes we forget to have breakfast and so they wanted to help us out. Oh, I felt so bad! Eggs, milk, bacon, frozen (not really anymore) hash browns and orange rolls.
We salvaged what we could and appreciated the thought behind the gift :)
This was one of the fun gifts the boys spent some time on Christmas day...also, Matt asked for a dart board so they set that up and we all played a few rounds.
I don't have a picture of it but I appreciated Andy's efforts in gifting and setting up a new nordic track rower for me. We were able to get it for more than half off through my trainer's husband who works at Icon. It was a pretty sweet deal! I'm really enjoying it!
We played games, relaxed and eventually watched Pixar's new movie "Soul" that night, but before we watched, we had a long Zoom call with all the Bryans. The Callisters were in Costa Rica for Christmas so that was fun. This was just a shot I got of Ben doing his thing and Josh copying him for a minute...
Over all, we had a wonderful stay at home Christmas!
Looks like you had a very fun Christmas. I enjoyed going through each photo in enlarged format. Almost felt like I was there.
ReplyDelete(That is so sad about the breakfast box.)