Hi!!
I missed you!
How are you?
I am coming out from under one thousand (conservative estimate) Hershey kiss/M&M/pretzel candies, sort of stumbling around and blinking my eyes like a newborn kitten. Only I am a middle aged lady who has also been drinking too many old fashioneds. Not as cute.
Some pics from Christmas Eve eve, uploaded in random order because Blogger:
1. The cutest little bite out a of dinner roll
Even though she is a very jolly elf, we put Minnie to bed and made cookies after dinner without her.
Christmas Eve:
It was lovely and cozy— we went to the Capitol to see the Christmas tree and made a huge dinner. That’s it.
Well! Except! We did our food-themed white elephant, which was hilarious. I ended up with a box of Fannie May pixies, and Coop got a YARD of Twix, but the other offerings were less clear-cut winners, you know? (We got Minnie a food-shaped Sqishmallow, and she was exempt from swapping.) 
The littles left cookies for Santa, and all 5 of them went to bed early, which was good, because as prepared as Santa thinks he is, there’s still a bunch to do last minute. Notably, Minnie dictated her note for Santa to Coop, which was darling. And! She could not draw a picture of Santa, so she drew dog poop (KIDS ARE SO WEIRD).
MAGIC-READY, just add five kids:
I got awesome, thoughtful, wonderful gifts, but the very best was Harry’s horror at this sweatshirt
Minnie wanted a cauldron from Santa, and the big guy came through
OF COURSE we wore matching jammies that our elves on the shelf delivered on Christmas Eve, but I only got one kind of bad pic. Hopefully we all wear them again on NYE.
Last night, we went to a fancy supper club to celebrate my dad’s birthday, which meant MOAR old fashioneds. Someday, I will be back to my teetotaling ways, but it’s almost NYE (I think), so I am going to need a second.
The littles left cookies for Santa, and all 5 of them went to bed early, which was good, because as prepared as Santa thinks he is, there’s still a bunch to do last minute. Notably, Minnie dictated her note for Santa to Coop, which was darling. And! She could not draw a picture of Santa, so she drew dog poop (KIDS ARE SO WEIRD).
Christmas day was lazy and delightful
We just sort of sat around and ate homemade cinnamon rolls and opened gifts and played with gifts and admired gifts all day— it was delightful
ALSO LOOK AT THESE AMAZING EARRINGS JUST CASUALLY TOSSED IN A PILE OF OTHER STUFF TO OPEN
On the day after, we purged.
On the 26th, Ben took down all of our Christmas decorations and tossed 2 trees to the curb and boxed 2 more awhile I baked gingerbread house pieces for our annual competition (so much more fun than buying kits because everything smells amazing, tastes great, and is all wonky from imperfect rolling, which adds another challenge). I also made incredibly stiff royal icing this year because I bought it from the cookie decorating store and just had to add water— 10/10; will do this again.No treeeees!!
All of the houses stood up this year—- except Ben and Coop’s, which FB liked the best anyway **eye roll**
Competition ready:
Happy end-of-year slothdom, friends.
Sarah! I was planning to send a "well blogger check" email this morning after my Starbucks run because I was worried something awful took you or the family down! So I am glad to see a post from you! It sounds like your holiday was amazing. Your Christmas morning looked so festive. We don't wrap Santa gifts and he doesn't give big gifts so I think Christmas morning is a bit 'meh' for our kids - or at least the initial coming down the stairs experience. They did get a ton of things they were excited about when we opened presents later that morning, though.
ReplyDeleteThe gingerbread houses are amazing!
So festive! Minnie has a new cough and horrible rash, but otherwise, we are healthy-ish!
Delete1) We got my nephew (7ish? boy, I should really know their ages better than I do) in the Christmas draw and he asked for a giant squishmallow and we got a giant cow squishmallow at Costco and he's obsessed with it and his parents keep sending us photos of him cuddling with it. I do not understand the squishmallow thing, but Am Old, so accept that it does not have to be appealing to me to be appealing to them.
ReplyDeleteYou take down Christmas on the 26th?! That is BONKERS to me. Our decorations will be up through at least New Year's and maybe even another week or two past that if I can't stand the idea of the dark mornings and dark evenings without the tree lights.
You definitely win by actually baking gingerbread house pieces instead of just buying a kit! That seems hard!
I was so ready to get rid of all the clutter! Also both of our upstairs trees were needle droppers this year.
DeleteI'm impressed- do you make FIVE gingerbread houses from scratch??? I used to do two every year (I phased that out last year) and I thought that was a lot. It's hard to do it all from scratch, but I agree- the quality is so much better.
ReplyDeleteYou are hardcore- taking down Christmas on the 26th!!!
Your decorated cookies look a lot like ours. Do they end up getting eaten? Ours end up with so much frosting and sprinkles, they look repulsive and no one wants to actually eat them. I'm always begging the kids to decorate some TASTEFULLY so I don't end up throwing them away. This year I actually kept some back and served them up undecorated- and those got eaten.
Looks like you had a VERY fun and festive Christmas!
They are very small houses, to be fair. 1.5 times the King Arthur flour recipe does the trick with enough leftover to make some cookies too.
DeleteYou have the CUTEST family, omg. Love all of your matching jammies. The entire holiday season sounds so full and fun.
ReplyDeleteVery full!!
DeleteY'all are too cute and TOO energetic oh my god, I thought about baking gingerbread houses for Eve and her friends and it made me feel like crying. The year I did they were actually edible though, so good call there.
ReplyDeleteSanta dog poop and stained princess dress FTW.
LOL the dog poop slayed me.
DeleteSuch a jolly time! And everyone looks so cute! I'm so impressed by the from-scratch gingerbread houses and that you can run a White Elephant with just your offspring!
ReplyDeleteAnd curious about the dinner club thing--is that a family tradition?
Supper clubs are huge in WI, and my dad loved a good steak place, so we like to go for nostalgia reasons.
DeleteThis post just SCREAMS festive. I'm so glad people were relatively healthy and it looks like so much fun.
ReplyDeleteOur tree is still up (the upstairs real one; downstairs artificial is down), but most of the other decorations are neatly packed up and away and it feels a little sad but mostly AMAZING!
Wow, Sarah. Just, wow. Your Christmas was fun-, food- and family-filled, as it should be. So glad you had such wonderful days with everyone. And also - you went to Harvey House??? You are the first person I know who has been there! I hope it was amazing.
ReplyDelete