Boxing Day/New Years Eve

Going to the church with cousins on Boxing Day is easily one of our very favorite traditions.

As we were preparing for Christmas Mckinley kept telling me she wanted to get something for Christmas that we could use on boxing day at the church. I kept ignoring her knowing we were giving the kids a hover board for Christmas. We ended up giving them two hover boards and they have been so fun. It was a blast to have them at the church. We had such a good time and hung around all morning.

Emmy, Liam, and Jackson.

My mom did a bowling and pizza party for the kids for Christmas. It was a lot of fun.

Todd and his family drove from Seattle for a Christmas surprise since they are moving to Germany for three years in April. It was great to spend some time with him.

After bowling the kids were able to play the saran wrap ball game that they missed out on Christmas Eve.

So then randomly we went bowling again the next day for Lincoln's birthday with Brandon's family. It was a lot of fun.

New Years Eve Chinese food. It was so yummy!!!!

This time we decided to make our mess in the church instead of at home. It was pretty fun!

Ross and Karen set up pictionary with the huge white board. The kids loved it!

Jason and Shannon brought their kareoke machine and we had a fun dance party with glow in the dark bracelets.

And then of course the poppers.

Jackson has been so good to sleep in his car seat wherever he go. He really is turning into a pretty good baby! After the party we went home and I started a puzzle and the kids watched the old Jumanji movie with Robin Williams. Tyler, Mckinley, Brandon and I all made it up to midnight. Tyler was asking what happens at midnight and I told him nothing. New Years Day we sat around in our pajamas all day and did the puzzle and were just lazy. It was hard being sick for the holidays.

Christmas 2019

We were able to enjoy Christmas quite a bit, despite the sickness we had going on. Brandon surprised me and only worked for a couple hours on Christmas Eve so we had quite a bit of time to spend together as a family. We went to lunch at Burger King.

Then dinner at my mom's house. She had a lot of plans and we ended up leaving early before they did all the fun stuff. It was a big bummer. I think next year we will stay home on Christmas Eve and maybe we can convince her to do her party on a different day.

Got home and put out cookies for Santa.

Brandon and I had assembled all the bikes in advance and it didn't take us long at all to get everything ready on Christmas Eve.

It's always so fun to watch the kids on Christmas morning. They all slept in our room, as they had been doing ever since school got out like 5 days before. Kallie woke up first at about 7:15. She waited around playing on my phone till Tyler and Mckinley woke up around 7:45. They went out to look at everything and looked at their stockings and then finally at 8:30 we went in and woke up Ava and Brandon so we could get started. Ava was pretty sick, as was Brandon, so we wanted to let them sleep as long as possible but the kids couldn't stand it any longer.

The kids do a really good job of opening one present at a time. Jackson loved all the wrapping paper.

We did the reindeer pancakes for breakfast. It was a nice relaxing morning and great to just take our time and be together as a family.

Brandon was up for hours in the night so he went back to sleep after breakfast for a nap before we went over to Ross and Karen's.

Ava wasted no time loading all her new toys into her shopping cart and pushing them around.

We had a good time at Brandon's parents for a few hours and then spent the rest of the night at home. My Christmas wish was for Jackson to fall asleep in my arms and thankfully because he was a little sick, I got what I wanted. I sure love my babies.