Christmas

Christmas 2017 was so wonderful!  The pictures don't do justice to how wonderful it was!!  The kids are at such fun ages right now, and everything just seemed perfect.  We, of course, started the holiday with our Christmas Eve party at Nana and Poppy's house.  We continued the tradition of playing bingo for funny little presents...

Ella and Vivvie just "happened" to win matching pajamas, which they promptly put on so they could match...

Cute girls...

Here are some other Bingo prizes...

After dinner, we had a special visitor once again.  Santa made an appearance, just like he had the year before...

He shared a special message about the true meaning of Christmas...

Then we sang some Christmas carols...

And then Santa presented gifts to each of the kids one at a time...

This year, Santa gave each of the kids a hat...

We have loved having Santa join us at the Christmas Eve party for the past couple years.  It has become such a fun tradition...

After Santa left, we moved the party downstairs to exchange presents with each other...

And the kids got their annual Christmas jammies too...

Then it was home to bed with dreams of sugar plums dancing in all our heads.

The next morning, Vivvie was the first to wake up.  She was so excited to see what Santa had brought...

Her brothers weren't quite as excited...

We also woke up to find a white Christmas outside our windows as well...

And Santa had made his visit as well...

The kids came downstairs to see what Santa had brought them.  Connor got an X Box game he had wanted...

Cohen got a superhero video game and a bunch of accessories to go with it...

Vivvie got her American Girl Doll she had been dreaming of...

And Aiden got a phone...

Mike was our photographer, so he had to turn the camera around to prove that he was there as well.  Haha...

Vivvie was thrilled to have her American Girl Doll that looked just like her...

Here's some other gifts the kids got this year...

Nana and Poppy came over a little later that morning to give their gifts to the kids, including these BB guns for the boys.  Of course, I had to throw out the line, "You'll shoot your eye out!"  Naturally...

One of my favorite gifts was this sweatshirt that I got from my parents.  It's perfect for me because I'm such a summer girl.  I hate the cold, and I'm always cold in the winter...

My mom gave similar sweatshirts to my sisters too, and when we all went to my parents' house later that day, we all happened to be wearing them.  Haha...

Later that night, we went back home where the kids played with their new toys more.  And fell asleep amongst those toys too.  Now if that isn't a great end to Christmas, I don't know what is...

Christmas 2017 was absolutely wonderful!  I loved everything about it!!  It was just about as magical as Christmas can get.  --Lindsay