Christmas Day 2024

Surprisingly, the girls actually let us sleep in till about 7am this morning, which wasn’t too bad! But they were of course chomping at the bit to go check out the Christmas tree and all the presents in the dining room.

Emerson picked out this little elephant for Addison while shopping with Grammy last week, and Addie loved it so much, and Emmie was so proud of herself for picking it out.

I wasn’t quite fast enough to capture this in a photo, but Addie had her head fully inside this bag trying to get the last tiny thing from the bottom of the bag.

One of Emerson’s biggest gifts this year, is to finally get her ears pierced, which she’s been asking us for, for the past two years or so. So I went ahead and bought her a few of the cute little multi-packs from Claire’s, so she’ll have lots of options once she’s allowed to start changing them out. Hopefully, we can find time this Christmas break to take her to the mall to get them pierced!

And their big “together gift” this year were some tickets to see the Christmas lights at Wild Adventures, this coming Saturday! My work friend told me they were on super sale a few weeks ago, and that we could get a free VPK pass for Addie, so all four of us can go for only $90! Daddy drew out these cute little tickets for them, and I colored them, and although Addie couldn’t read it, obviously Emmie told her and they were both so excited!

And of course we got Pennie a few little gifts too.

After we got dressed and ready, we went over to my parents’ house around 10am. We started out with my two favorites – Christmas pie (which is ham & cheese quiche with diced bell peppers) and sausage & cheese balls, for a light snacky-brunch.

It was looking a lot like Christmas had exploded in their dining room, but it was so festive and I loved it! Also, take note of the fire on the tv, instead of the fire in the fireplace directly below it, since it was a typical Florida Christmas, and barely got below 60 degrees.

This cutie actually snoozed his way through most of the chaotic gift-opening portion of the morning, like a little angel baby boy.

And now we can reveal the special project Jeff and I had been working on, since we gave them out as gifts this morning! I had the idea to create little home signs inspired by the Lennox spice house village (specifically the cinnamon house), with family names on them instead of spices. I came up with the idea and the first sketch, then my talented artist husband drew them out and watercolor painted them, and I did all the outlines on everything. And they came out so incredibly cute! We are still going to make one for ourselves, and one more family member, and we joked about starting our own Etsy store too. (I actually looked there first to see if I could order something, and then when I didn’t find what I was looking for, that’s when we decided we could do it ourselves.)

Took these photo last night once they were finally completed, but couldn’t share it on yesterday’s post, since we obviously didn’t wanna give away the surprise.

The girls all got some dress-up clothes for Christmas today, and so obviously they spent quite some time playing in them before lunch.

And lunch was dee-licious! Ham, 7 layer salad, potato salad (one without relish, because Bo is weird and doesn’t like relish), red rice, and yeast rolls.

Also, Aaron, Mandy & Asher were in town from Missouri, and he is so adorable, but was definitely a little unsure what to do with all those noisy, wild girls.

We had a great morning with our big huge family, full of excited squeals and happy shouts and lots of hugs and loves. So, so thankful for all of these people!

We left around 2pm, and little miss Addie Pie was exhausted, but still only squeezed in a 15-minute power nap in the car on the way home. We went home for about an hour, just to drop off the first round of presents, let Pennie out, and sit quietly for 45-ish minutes, before moving to the third round of Christmas.

We made it over to Nana & PopPop’s house a little after 4pm. I realized I hadn’t gotten their sister pic in these matching dresses yet (both saved from last year), so we snapped a pic on Nana’s front door before heading inside.

And I had another cup of coffee, because I was dragging and needed another pick-me-up, after all the activity of the day.

Nana had lots of fun little Christmas goodies leftover from the things she gave out at church last week, so we all donned a few items and snapped some fun family photos.

Another absolutely delicious meal, with ham, scalloped potato cups, sweet potato casserole, green bean casserole, corn, cranberry jello salad, and yeast rolls.

And then the third round of presents, with lots more fun stuff for everyone.

We stuffed ourselves with some dessert after gifts, while watching Jeopardy, letting the girls change into their jammies and play around on a super soft, fuzzy white rug Nana has that they’re obsessed with. By the time we made it home and got them started on bedtime, it was 9pm, and Emerson was super sleepy and went to sleep right away. But even after skipping her nap today, Addison still fought us and needed a little extra loves before I was able to lay her down in her bed.

These holidays are always long days, full of too much food, a bit of over-stimulation, but also so much love and laughter. So thankful that we are blessed to have both sets of or parents here in the same town with us, so that we get to celebrate multiple times, with so much of our family!