Christmas Eve!! It was a little more laid back this day. We had some of Matt’s family come over around 2. I had so many leftovers from the night before that I just brought it all back out and heated up! Cathy, Matt’s mom, cooked some goodies too! I did however add one thing to the menu at the last-minute and that was mimosas!! Got to have them during the chaotic present opening:) We usually just do finger foods and snacks for this one because it is between meals.
A month or so ago me and Brooke, my SIL, wrote down all of their names and let them choose out of a cup. The name they chose would be the person they bought a gift for. They all had so much fun with this and put deep thought into their cousins gifts! So we let them exchange the gifts they had gotten for each other before opening Milly’s (what the kids call Matt’s mom).
Cathy always does the best stockings and is also a great gift buyer! She does a stocking for all of us including the adults! I love her stockings!!
The kids got some great gifts from their Milly including new tennis shoes, lincoln logs, stuffed animals, art ad craft stuff and more!
Jp got a new bow and arrow from his uncle Mark! He had to immediately go outside and shoot it. Can you say ALL BOY?
After Maddie opened her shoes I asked her to show them to me because they were precious and this is the photo I got….
I thought this was hilarious. Our little Joee Kate got a Barbie doll that was bigger than she was!!
The boys were pretty excited about their new HUGE nerf guns! Have I mentioned lately how obsessed JP is with nerf guns and “nerf war”?
Jocelynn is a sucker for arts and crafts, just like her mommy. She was thrilled she got a huge thing of gel pens. She looked at me and said “you can borrow them, ok?” Well, thank you Jocelynn. I sure do appreciate it.
Best.Buds.
After everyone left Aunt Jill, Kyle and Aunt Anna stopped by and gave the kids their gifts from them. I’m overwhelmed by all the gifts at this point and can’t help but think how lucky and blessed my kids are to be so loved.
We went and delivered cinnamon rolls to a couple of our neighbors so they could cook them Christmas morning. Then we made a ginger bread house, decorated cookies and looked to see where Santa was on the Santa tracker! We were about to head to bed when we realized the Elves stopped by to drop the kids off some Christmas Eve jammies!
We placed their decorated cookies on a plate along with a glass of milk and celery for Santa and the reindeer. We went upstairs to tuck our little babies (yes, I know they are not little babies but they are my babies) in to bed!
Time for mommy and daddy to get to work!! I had a few things wrapped already but we had so.much.to.do. Including putting this doll house together, which ended up being first on the list
I am glad we did that first because it took a total of almost 3 hours. Phew!! Everything was pretty simple after that. Putting together the swing cars, blowing up the horse jumpers, blow up Maddies ball pit, wrap more presents and put together JP’s work bench. Oh and stockings too but that didn’t take long. After all that it was around 1:15 and we were ready to hit the sack. I was so excited when we went to bed, I couldn’t wait to see their little faces the next morning.
Each child had their own pile of toys. Thais how my mom always did it when we were younger. You might notice one more pile, that is toys for them as a group. I usually do a few toys that encourages them to play together so I’ll get a few games or something like that; this year I did play-doh factories and play-doh accessories. 
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