December 2012 - Part 2

The whole family was here by the 21st, I believe, so we were in full celebration mode!  Because our kids are all getting older and we want to have our own traditions, the West Coast family members held Christmas at home before they came and we explained(lied) to the kids that Santa was going to come to their houses and Grandma's house this year.  So I still had to make our house beautiful and festive even though we were spending most of our time at my mom's with the family.  I actually love decorating!  It is phase 1 of operation magic!  Decorations were tricky this year with nine month old Wes on the prowl.  This was a daily scene at our house!

My mom had planned some fun things at her house as well for all the cousins to do.  My favorite was one night she had them all make candy trains!  I loved making candy trains when I was little so it was fun to see that being passed on to our kids! 

Other than little things like this, we just hung out.  This year was a bit of a downer because we passed around the stomach flu.  There are 19 of us and only 3 didn't get sick....not good.  But we still managed to play games, laugh and eat a lot of good food!  The new favorite game this year was Weedle.  I had never heard of it but it is awesome!  It's a very loud game so it was hard to play without worrying we were waking up people.  So Christmas Eve morning was actually when we celebrated Christmas with our kids.  So we did the whole nine yards that morning....stockings, gifts, and a big breakfast to boot.  It was amazing!  The first Christmas where they really knew what was going on and our last first Christmas.  It was little Wesley's first Christmas so it felt extra magical. 

I will do a whole post on Wesley because I feel like his life is hardly documented at all.  And, honestly, he has made our family so wonderful, full and satisfying.  But that will be another day!  It was a wonderful Christmas morning with my family.  We then headed to my parents to do Christmas Eve with the whole family and wake up together Christmas morning.  By this time, the stomach flu was in full swing so we knew by going over there we were taking our chances but it was Christmas.....and we ended up all getting a form of it except for Brady!  My mom had a special surprise for the kids on Christmas Eve.  Months earlier our ward had had an auction to support the Boy Scouts.  A guy had auctioned himself off as Santa and would come and visit your family and take pics.  Well, my mom bid on it knowing that we would all be together on Christmas.  She had found these small, beautiful velvet bags for each of the grandkids and put one present inside for each of them.  Then they stuffed Santa's big bag with all these small bags ahead of time.Anyway, Santa showed up and was just warming himself around the fire waiting for one of the kids to notice him through the window.  Eventually, we got the kids to go over and they were SO excited!!  WE all ran out and sat with Santa and he let them ask him questions.  The whole point of the Santa visit was that Santa needed our help to help a family in our ward who was having a hard Christmas.  So he let the kids each pick out their little bag if they promised to help deliver toys to the family.  The kids loved it so much!  It was really a magical moment for all of us!  Then Santa disappeared and we got in our cars and took presents over to the family.  After that, we came home and got in our new Christmas jammies and got the kids to bed.  Christmas morning was  a little nuts with all of us there and so many sick people so it was a bit of a blur!!  I didn't take any pictures...I was already starting to feel sick and it was just a lot of chaos!!  The rest of their visit was great!  We did manage to get out of the house to see The Hobbit and had some adult time.  Other than that, we stayed close to home, played games and just enjoyed each other's company!  Good Christmas!!!