Christmas Eve

Christmas this year has been so much fun!  It's the first year that I think the kids have actually understood Santa and that just makes it magical. We started the month doing some advents.  And now that I am a Pinterest addict, I had so many great ideas to choose from.  Both the turkey and Santa in the picture are ideas from Pinterest, so if you can go to my board "Holiday Ideas" sorry I'm not putting a link with the word "here" but I just don't know how:)  The Santa had no beard so everyday we put a cotton ball on to fill it up.  The kids really enjoyed it.  Conner is wearing an apron because we were making cookies for Santa after church.

I just think Conner looks so funny in this picture, you really see his personality.  He is such the oldest child....bossy! And I can say that because I'm an oldest child too:)

Christmas Eve was a full and fun day.  We were able to clean up the house to be  ready for Santa, then after lunch the kiddos all went to Grandma and Grandpa Hercules so mommy and daddy could go on a "date."  Said date included coming back home and putting together a trampoline!  We also had the pjs on the fireplace with Texas the Elf sitting on them.  He wrote a note saying how much he loved being our elf and how proud he was to always tell Santa about the good choices we made.  After setting up the trampoline, Kyle and I braved Walmart....it was crazy busy, so happy we didn't have the kids with us!  By this time it was dark so we went to get the kids (we were counting on the darkness to help hide the trampoline.  The kids had a great time with some of their favorite people.  I love living 10 min away from them!!  We picked up the munchkins and headed over to some of our friends from church home, the Johnson family.  They always do like a Christmas Eve open house.  Shannan us an amazing chef and she had so much food, mostly tasty cookies and treats, there was no way you could have left hungry.  Their daughter Savannah us our go to babysitter.  The kids just LOVE her and were so excited to go to "Savannah's house."   She is only 12, but she is wonderful! Love her!! We were there for about an hour, but Kevin was hungry and somehow the formula was left at grandmas....so we took the long way home, again to avoid the trampoline and stopped in front of the house.  I had the boys help me check the mail since I "forgot" just so we could go in the front door.  They were so excited to get their pjs and look like Texas.  It may be the only year I could get them all exactly matching and I think they look so stinking cute!

We set out cookies and milk and did our normal bedtime routine and sent the kiddos off to sleep....

Well I started this post about a quarter to 5am while feeding Kevin and he is now back asleep so I'm going to go try and lay him down, and maybe  I will get to write about Christmas day soon.  Till then,,,,