Christmas Eve

Sophia showing off her new monkey from Aunt Bess 

Leo telling Aunt Bess all about his monkey friend. 

opening some Christmas Eve goodies from Aunt Anne

My delicious buffet!

I made a tribute to Shelby with a a collage of fun Christmas pictures.  I encouraged people to write down a favorite memory of her and put it in the snowman box.  I, of course, made sure to put her near the desserts.

Lara, Mom and Anne

Dean and Nikayla

Cathy and Gene

Big Cousin John
this was the only picture I could manage to snap so he'll have to suffer with it being on the internet! ;)

The dudes in the kitchen
Stacy, Dean, Nick and Tom

Oh yeah, I did it.

The kids got an email from Santa...so exciting!

Leo helping Cooper open his present

Sophia got to open a present early too

Leo checking out his coloring book

Cooper fascinated with sorting candy

Charlie, Jacob, and Sarah snuggle on the couch

Time to open jammies and slippers!

Add caption

Leo modeling his slippers for everyone :)

New Jammies for Christmas Eve!!!

Sophia gets one last snuggle with Andrew before bed

Sarah doing some elf singing

the kids write their note to Santa

We hosted our usual chili feast for Christmas Eve.  It's nice to have both sets of family over but the hard part is that when it's on a weekday some people have to work and it can make for a late night to bed!  But it was really okay, it was much more important to see our family and the kids fell fast asleep, looking adorable in their new jams.  Sophia was concerned that Santa wouldn't see the cookies on top of the mantle (so Walter couldn't eat them) so she wanted to write him a note.  Leo helped.  It was a difficult Christmas without Shelby but we did the best we could.

Cookie Decorating

Leo was the king of sprinkles! 

Sophia and Molly get to work

relaxing with a holiday movie and some coffee

Leo hanging with his buddy, Gene

Showing Aunt Cathy his sprinkle creation

Aunt Anne gets creative too!

cookie anyone?

Every year Cathy hosts a cookie decorating party and this year we even got to decorate in the comforts of her new home!!  She and Gene got engaged a few months ago and we are so happy for them!  The kids love Gene and were excited to get to see their house.  We decorated (and maybe ate) tons of cookies that were perfect to put out on Christmas Eve for guests and for Santa (and I really appreciate that Sophia was so excited about her decorating skills that she didn't require me to make even more cookies!!:)

Snow Day!

Aaah, snow!  I personally am not a fan of the snow, but even I will bundle up in all the gear to see the joy on my kids' faces.  And I should note that my very stylish earmuffs once belonged to Shelby.  I actually bought them for her last Christmas and although adorable, I was surprised to know they were also very warm and functional!

 On Wednesday afternoon my mom had stopped by and told the kids it was supposed to start snowing sometime in the next few hours.  Sophia jumped for joy and Leo started yelling, "Santa is coming tonight, Santa is coming tonight!!"  LOL!  After we cleared up the Santa issue, the kids wouldn't stop looking out the windows.  There really wasn't any snow until Thursday morning and when Leo saw it he went running in to wake up his sister.  After traipsing around town trying to find Leo some boots we finally got outside.  They had so much fun and I had to drag them in after an hour.  We have a small slope near our driveway that I piled the snow high and made a little bunny hill.  Sophia was way into that while Leo was mostly into shoveling and putting snow in his dump truck.  They both made snow angels and were bummed it wasn't particularly good snowman snow.  We're hoping for more snow soon, even me so that I feel like those boots I bought will be justified! ;)