Christmas, part 1

I have been meaning to post about Christmas for quite some time now but, to be honest, it's been pretty overwhelming just thinking about sorting through all of our photos!  I know I need to do it though, because I will absolutely regret it if I don't have it on here to remember actual memories that go along with the pictures.

We'll start with the pre-Christmas activities:

This picture has nothing to do with Christmas but it was taken in the beginning of December.  I just think my baby is stinking cute and cannot believe how big she's getting.  That's all. :)

Another thing we did that has nothing to do with Christmas is we made our own puffy paint.  I got the idea from Pinterest.  I have to say, the instructions were definitely right when they said it would be watery.  We did NOT have the right paper for this!  But it gave us a good hour of fun so it was totally worth it.

I don't have a picture of Maurah because she was in her underwear that day (if you've read this blog at all before, you should know my kids much prefer their skivvies to their clothes!) but this is her arm reaching across to Cole's arm and I got a picture of THAT because, with four kids 5 years old and under, sharing is a big deal!

Now, onto some Christmas posts!  We made sugar cookies together and I let the kids cut theirs out on their own this year.  Time consuming, but fun!

Laina just woke up from a 3 hour nap!  I love her yawning on Jake's lap:

I love these photos of Laina because Cole had her cracking up doing the silliest things.

Then, when I asked her to smile for a picture with him, she looks pained, doesn't she?  Apparently, Mommy is not at ALL as funny as her brother.

A Shrek Santa princess right here - yep, we let all kinds into our family!

Our Thankful Tree from November...it became a Thankful Stump halfway through the month and it took me almost until Christmas to take it down.  I had high hopes of doing something similar for December, but...next year!

I was able to go into Cole's classroom and help decorate gingerbread houses.  Pretty sure he ate more of the candy on his plate than he got on his house...my kind of kid. :)

After I let this happen, I visited multiple friends' homes where they kept the gingerbread houses as decorations and did not let their kids eat it because, by then, it was all stale and yucky.  Apparently, our family motto is "If it has sugar, it's a free for-all."

This was just the first of many Christmasy sugar highs to follow!