Christmas 2012

Christmas was amazing this year.  Even though December is busy, Christmas time felt low stress and lovely.  I am truly blessed with an incredible family (parents, siblings, in-laws, etc) and I really felt that this Christmas season.

Our annual Christmas pajama pic - I love this...

I made stockings!!!!  Yay!!! Once upon a time, a long time ago, I made 3 matching stockings with lots and lots of help from Ben's mom.  At the time, Ben and I were newly married with no kids, so I thought I was being rather ambitious to be making 3 stockings.  Well... 10 years later, and I'm 3 stocking short.  I'd been making do over the past years with dollar store stockings to fill in the gaps, but this year I thought enough is enough - I found this cute inspiration for burlap and muslin stockings HERE.  I lined them with cream colored felt on the inside and hand stitched the names on.  I cheated by printing a cute font onto tracing paper and then pinned each name onto the stockings - then I just embroidered straight through the tracing paper, and then just ripped off the scraps at the end.  It worked like magic!

We had Christmas Eve dinner and our final advent with Ben's family and then we drove home and tucked the kids in bed and waited for Santa...

Christmas morning was awesome.  I LOVE watching the kids open their gifts and get so excited to give gifts to each other...

Yay!  New camera!!  I've had my point and shoot camera for 5 years and a couple weeks before Christmas the lens started to not open when I'd turn on the camera... so I was literally opening the lens with my fingers to get it started.  Thanks hubby for my awesome gift!  And miracle of miracles I also got an iphone!  Never had a smart phone till now and I'm so excited about it!!  My favorite part about it is using Instagram!  :)

Jake got lots of boy toys for Christmas...

We had traditional cinnamon rolls for breakfast (homemade by Ben!) and then we hopped in the car to have more Christmas with Ben's family.  When we arrived there was a boat load of gifts!  for reals!...

The adults in the family got a canoe for Christmas!  We tested it out later.  I also got to start testing out my new camera - welcome to the world of higher quality photos, susan...

Canoe!  Conveniently, Ben's parents live in a community with lakes - so we drove the canoe around the corner and took it for a joy ride...

Jake was "too scared" to ride in the canoe - so he hung out on the shore playing with sticks...

After getting back home later that day, the kids delved into all their new toys.  Jake's Hot Wheels were a hit...

Aaron spent Christmas with Stefani and her family in Arizona.  So we got a fun visit from them that evening.  They gave us some wonderful gifts and we skyped with my family in my kitchen.  :)

Merry Christmas!