A very Merry Christmas

After much waiting and preparing, Christmas finally arrived! 

I love these early years as parents, establishing new holiday traditions and keeping old ones going. 

We tried to go to the candlelight service at church on Christmas Eve. 

Our church puts on a beautiful program, with videos, live music, and of course the candles. 

We took Max last year and he was able to sit through the whole thing, so I thought he would do the same this year....

I had taken Eli out to nurse and was listening to the service on a TV, when I heard a child yelling, "Where's Mommy?" 

This got louder and louder and turned into screaming, "No, no, no, no leave church."

By that time I knew it was Max. 

Queue a temper tantrum. 

So we only made it through half of the service and missed the candle lighting, but we came home and ate some delicious BBQ chicken sandwiches (made by Julian), and had a quiet evening watching the snow starting to fall. 

We even had a small Christmas miracle at our house, I made dark chocolate chip oatmeal raisin cookies all by myself...and they even tasted good. 

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 The boys woke up bright and early Christmas morning, before 6am, eager to head downstairs and see what Santa brought.

(I tried to tell them that the present opening pictures would be nicer with natural light, like around 8a.m., but no one listened to me)

There was a backpack for Max, new building blocks, and a remote control for Eli to play with (because he is always stealing our real one). Max opened every single one of the presents and handed them to their rightful owner afterwards. We tried to keep things very simple this year, Max got a wooden train set, and a play camera (he "takes pictures" constantly). Eli also got some wooden toys to play with, and new jammies. Julian and I got each other a new big vacuum cleaner as well as a handheld one, and we put them to use as soon as they arrived, they never even made it under the tree. The boys were absolutely spoiled with presents from Nana and Grandpa, they received a new play kitchen, the push cart, a leap pad, more toys, books etc...

Vintage style Christmas pictures :)

It was hard to get Max to sit down for breakfast with so many new toys to play with, but we forced him to eat some eggs and banana and then it was right back to playing. It was a lovely lazy morning, we sipped coffee, we played, we were thankful. 

Eli kept teasing us...we thought maybe, just maybe, he would take his first steps on Christmas day...but he is not ready yet. He can stand in place for 5-10 seconds, but then he sits right back down. 

Once the sun was up, I snapped a few pictures of the boys in their matching pajamas.  

At one point, we were trying to get Max to lay on his tummy next to Eli so we told him to pretend like he was a worm. This resulted in him burying his head in the bed. So we told him to be a happy worm and this was the face we got...

 It was such an unexpected funny moment...we were all laughing to the point of tears. I have no idea why this face is a happy worm, but it was just adorable. 

I love you little boy. My happy worm <3

"No more pictures Mommy!"

After about 15 minutes everyone was tired of pictures. 

More play time followed, and everyone stayed in pajamas until late in the day. 

We hadn't gotten around to making our handprint ornaments yet, so we did that too. 

Eli swiped a bite of the very salty dough and was not happy with the taste. 

I love these little handprints, captured in flour. 

They are now sitting on the counter drying and waiting for paint...

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After naps, we headed over to our dear friends house for Christmas dinner. 

Darren and Laura also have two boys, pretty close in age, and I love that they completely understand the challenges and joys of raising little boys. 

So when we showed up with lettuce but no fixings for the salad, they said, " No worries, we bought the bread, but left it in Ft. Collins". 

They just get us. 

Laura put together a delicious spaghetti dinner, and the boys played their little hearts out. 

It was simple, laid-back, and so relaxing, a really wonderful Christmas dinner.

Hardest picture to take.EVER...impossible to get these four all smiling at once!

 I am used to keeping a very close eye on Max, because he plays rough, but with Liam and Kipton that isn't necessary. If anything, they play even rougher :)
They took turns playing "monster", which basically amounted to one of them chasing the other two, and all three screaming really loudly...boys :) 

We finished the night off with ice cream and headed home in the bitter cold. 

We were blessed this Christmas with both quiet family as well as loud friend time. 

I asked Julian if he was sad that we wouldn't be able to take anymore Christmas light pictures until next year and his answer was a resounding, "No". 

I suppose we have had our fill of Christmas time, and look forward to a new year, new backdrops, and hopefully many more memories to capture. 

Merry Christmas all!