Christmas Eve

After we got back from the Logan Christmas, we got dressed up for Christmas Eve mass.

After mass and a festive dinner of Spangles (What? Doesn't everyone eat fast food after Christmas Eve mass??), we let the kids open their Christmas Eve present:

I think next year, I might put them in 3 boxes.....

They got new jammies, hot chocolate, and a treat.
After they watched a movie with their hot chocolate & treat in their jammies, we read The Night Before Christmas and then set out milk & cookies for Santa.

Before I headed to bed, I got a rare picture of "Santa" eating a cookie & drinking milk though!!!

The presents didn't show up until this "Santa" was fast asleep though..... ;0)

Logan Christmas

On Christmas Eve morning, we headed over Jeff's parents' house for The Logan Family Christmas!
First, I had my kids pose with their grandparents:

We were a little early, so Riley helped Grandma fix breakfast. :0)

Elayne & Lily hanging out:

All of us!

After a yummy breakfast, it was time to open presents!!

We try to be a little organized about it (each family opens 1 present at a time starting with the youngest's [Richard's] family), but it is still pretty chaotic and loud. :0)

After all of the presents are opened, and all of the bags ands wrappings are cleaned up, we make another mess! This is the second year the grandkids have made gingerbread houses. This is a fun tradition that I hope continues!!

Before we left, we took a final picture of all of the grandkids with the Gary & Sheril.

Don't look too closely....they are all really dirty in this picture from breakfast, candy, and gingerbread house making. LOL!

The Last of Elfie for 2013

I am finally getting around to posting about Christmas!! Better late than never though. :0)

Anyway, Elfie was entertaining us up until Christmas Eve! Here is what he was up to the last week before Christmas!

He decided to take a ride on a pony and see the scenic Familyroom:

We caught him with pop & popcorn one morning. He had stayed up all night watching Christmas movies!!

Taking a spin in Barbie's car:

"I feel pretty! Oh so pretty!"

I think Elfie is a little too big for the mini ponies ferris wheel.....

The kids could not believe it one morning when they found their underwear in the place of their stockings!!!

One morning, we found him decorating snowflakes!

Then on Christmas Eve morning, we found him sitting on some presents with a note telling us he was going back to the North Pole until next December.

 

 

Here are the places Elfie went to during the day after cleaning up his messes:

 

It was fun to see where Elfie would be every morning, but it's nice to not him make messes every night too. ;0)
See you next year Elfie!!

"Gingerbread" Trees

The kids did not have school on Tuesday due to a broken water pipe, so I took advantage of the time at home to make "gingerbread" trees. You actually use ice cream cones, not gingerbread, but you get the idea. It is a good idea to get the sugar cones though. Waffle cones are not even, so they do not sit straight. We also got green icing, gummy worms, gumdrops, sprinkles, and candy balls in the kids' favorite colors:

They got to work right away!

I think all of their trees looked great!

It was nice to have this unexpected day with them! We seem to be on the go almost every evening & weekend, so it was nice to just relax together & do a fun Christmas project!

Grinch Night!

We started the Grinch Night tradition last year. The kids loved it so much that we decided to make it a yearly thing. In fact, when the kids saw the green cookies come out of the oven, they said, "Grinch Cookies!!"

All I do for the cookies is make the dough for chocolate chip cookies, add green food coloring, and then this year instead of chopped Andes mints, the kids saw dark chocolate chips mixed with mint chips that they decided they wanted to try. The Grinch punch is just lime sherbet and Sprite! 

We turned the movie on....

got our snacks ready, and had a "grinchy" good time! :0)

More Elfie Antics!

Elfie has had some a crazy things going on since the last time I posted! It started off bright and early Tuesday morning with Elfie floating in his very own hot air balloon!!

He must have been on reindeer "duty" the next day, because he brought back a friend and had to clean up after him! :-0

On Thursday morning, we found him hula hooping with a Barbie ballerina using glow sticks.  

T-Rex played a game of UNO with Elfie on Friday: 

And then Elfie helped himself to some hot cocoa and cookies!!

Elfie must have known it was going to warm up a bit here in Wichita, since he was relaxing in a swimsuit and sunglasses with some magazines on Sunday morning.

Then this morning, we found him climbing a candy cane rope!!

He is such a crazy elf!!

As usual, we found him in funny spots after he cleaned up his messes:

The kids can't wait to see what Elfie will do next!