Christmas Eve 2016

Christmas Eve dawned extra early -- the middle of the night to be precise -- with Alex coming in our room and crying that his ear hurt.  Thankfully, he went back to sleep after I gave him some medicine, but the ear ache was the tipping point to me hauling all of the boys to the doctor's office first thing that morning to have them checked out.   The results?  Ear infection for Alex, possible sinus infection for Ethan, and nothing but fever and a cough for Isaac.  After heading home with a couple of prescriptions for Amoxicillin, we got on with our regularly scheduled Christmas Eve programming!

{Jane was tickled pink to see that this tree outside our garage had been "garlanded." }

 This game is really fun -- the only downfall is that it has caused a major ruckus between Ethan and the little kids, who Ethan has forbidden from playing it because it's for ages 8 and up and he's pretty intense about following guidelines.  Hahaha.

{The Scrambled States of America game, however, is perfect for Jane and company.}

Even though we decorated our gingerbread house cookies last week, the kids were still pretty insistent on decorating our traditional, 3D, store-bought version for Christmas Eve as well.  Round 1 didn't go so well -- the icing bag burst and one of the keys pieces fell off the table and broke into too many pieces to try and glue back together -- so I agreed to check Walgreens for any extra kits when I went to pick up everyone's medicine.  As luck would have it, there were still a few boxes left, and I came home with a "mini village" for the kids to decorate.  The kids, however, were over it at that point and had moved on to watching Home Alone 2.  Except for Sophie.  She was ALL about decorating the mini village and knocked it out of the park all on her own.

 (Grace was more interested in stacking these bottles than doing any gingerbreading.)

Before things started to fall apart.

 Mini Village!

We finished the evening early with our annual Christmas gumbo, the last of our family gifts, new ornaments for the year, and our Christmas pageant program before sending the kids on up to bed EXTRA early, so that Santa had a chance to finish up some projects before delivering their presents.  ;)

 Ornament time!

 An elf on the shelf for our little elf on the shelf.  Hahaha.

 What what??  Alex was SUPER stoked about his Mario ornament.

Lippy Lip! 

An angel of music for my little angel of music.   :)

 Custom created "Apple Jack" My Little Pony ornament for our resident MLP superfan.

 Snoopy covered in Christmas lights for my Lights Boy.

Stay tuned for more Christmas celebrations!