Merry Christmas! This was somewhat a usual Christmas, but also felt somewhat unique as the kids are growing up and I realized I have more pictures of the pets than of the kids this year.

Santa came!

Christmas Eve in the dark.

This year the kids each bought each other presents. Lex bought Eve a laptop so she could play Minecraft with him more easily. Previously she had been playing on my computer, which isn’t exactly a gaming machine. Now she’s got an awesome computer and they have been having fun playing together.

First things first, presents from each other.

Eve got Lex a Settles of Catan expansion pack, and the promise to play the board game with him! :)  I love that both presents involved playing with each other.

Lex was excited to watch Eve open her present.

This year I was the first one awake (not counting Mema and Tom because no one can beat them!) and when the kids woke up I had to remind them about opening stockings! They were weirdly not eagerly awaiting present opening.  Or they were, but they are now more mature about it and not jumping on the be at 6am in pure excitement. In fact, they laughed at me because I was the one eagerly bouncing with excitement while waiting for the whole family to arrive in the morning. :)

This about sums up Eve these days.

But don’t you worry, we opened those presents!

Silly girl.

We also had phone calls with family from one coast to the other, and we did some Facetiming with Barney and Lorie.

Facetiming with the CA crew.

The present theme this year turned out to be cozy clothes and board games. We all enjoyed several (hours long!) games of Catan, and many more (minutes long) games of Otrio! I’m eager to play Prime Climb soon too. We have a NYE game night planned and the kids are already picking out the games. I think all three of those games are on the agenda, along with Apples to Apples and Hearts.

We played Catan for hours!

Eve got a stuffy puppy to match our puppy stuffy.

Stuffy and puppy

Christmas dinner was lasagna, salad, and bread. I the first proper meal I’ve cooked in a long time. My friend and her boys came to join us again and brought a delicious chocolate cake with a drawing of Huxley on it. :)

Christmas dinner. I think Alan has a better picture on his phone.

A family picture. We’ll try this again next year when (hopefully) Eve will smile for the camera and I won’t be as huge. :/

The rest of my pictures are of Huxley.  Imagine if this cool portrait mode setting had existed when my kids were babies.  Sigh.  At least I still have one kid who will smile, an adorable dog, and two beautiful sisters.

Lex and Huxley

Rosy and Huxley

Huxley and the aunties

Post-party pup

Huxley and his lovie

The true purpose of vacation! <3

Merry Christmas to all of you.  We have a lovely two week vacation from school this year, and we are enjoying every day of it. We went to an awesome theater yesterday to watch the latest Star Wars movie. It was a fun family outing. Today Alan ran some errands, but the rest of us snuggled in and avoided the winter storm.  Tomorrow is NYE and we are excited to play games and eat Cheetos.  Yep, that’s our family tradition.  Bring in the new year!

PS. Hi Greg!!