Christmas Day

Christmas morning I was up nursing Penny at 3:30am and who should I hear stirring? Steven and Benny of course. Before we had put them down for bed that night we showed them the clock in the kitchen and warned them they were not to wake us up before the first number on the clock said 6. Well, they were abiding by this but not realizing how slowly time moves, they were running to the clock every few minutes to see if that number had changed to 6 yet. When I finished nursing Penny, I explained to them that there were lots more minutes until 6 so they better go to sleep!!

Thankfully they eventually did fall asleep but unfortunately for us, Lucy and Penny weren't to interested in sleeping in so we were up shortly before 7. Our walk with our girls down our creaky stairs woke up the boys and we were soon going present crazy!

Penny really loved the new bottle Santa got her:

Steven was slightly disappointed by the notebook and pen Benny got him. He was under the impression that the toy he picked out for Ben, would be the toy he would get from Ben. Confused? You should be! But despite his disappointment, he still put on a smile:

I got this necklace more for me than for Lucy. I love it and want her to wear it lots and lots. But she usually doesn't wear necklaces very long- she likes to put them on and then take them off. She surprised me though and wore the necklace most of Christmas morning: 

Tyler looked very dashing in his new Fedora. Except I think it might be a little small- notice the way it's perched precariously on his head? Too bad I didn't keep the receipt :(

Benny looks pretty devious with his new Nerf gun (both boys got one). But he is a sweet kid. Unlike Steven who whined that I had more presents to unwrap then him, Benny proclaimed after unwrapping his last present, "I got everything I wanted!" Christmas morning success!

Here he is with his everything! His Santa gift, a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle Lego Set- exactly what he asked for!

Steven with his "I wish I had more to open" gifts. He got the same Santa gift as Benny. Surprisingly though, I think his favorite gift was a book with real life Tornado pictures. He kept telling me how happy he was that I got that for him. That gratitude for the book KIND OF trumps his bad attitude on lack of presents to open...

Super adorable Lucy who was more excited about opening gifts than actually playing with them:

Penny who has no idea what's going on but got some styling clothes, shoes and headbands:

I got an awesome waffle maker (now I can cook 4 waffles at once instead of 2- much more efficient!) and a wireless speaker that I can play my tunes on. Tyler also made a valiant effort to buy me trendy infinity scarfs, maxi skirts, a necklace and Toms shoes. His effort paid off and I won't be embarrassed to wear any of it (while not TOO embarrassed ;) )

Tyler was spoiled rotten. He got a compact table saw (I mostly caved on this one because he promised to make me a dining room table with it) and he got a Ghostbuster Lego set and a 4 slicer toaster (we are all about efficient appliances here in the Hatch home):

The boys spent the rest of the morning building their Lego sets:

Penny spent part of the morning with me trying her cute new stuff on her:

And she spent the other part of it under Lucy's new umbrella:  

Christmas afternoon the kids watched Steven's new "tornado" movie "The Wizard Oz" while I slaved over the stove making Christmas dinner. Ok I exaggerate,it wasn't that intense. It was a pretty big dinner for us though and quite delicious. It included: ham, mashed potatoes, biscuits, yams and apple cider.

After dinner we crashed on the couch and watched "Home Alone" and ate some pie. It was a good night!

Despite this being our first Christmas away from all our friends and family it was good day. I won't lie, we missed everyone and we missed some of our AZ traditions but it was an extremely relaxing Christmas. In the past we've always been rushing around- we'd do our celebration, then we'd go to the Hatch home for lunch and then to my parent's home for dinner. But for once we just got to hang out home and play with our Christmas toys and be lazy, lazy, lazy. I do like lazy :)

Christmas Eve

Tuesday's Christmas Countdown was a special Christmas lunch- Reindeer sandwiches. His antler's looked bigger in real life....

Tyler was given permission to work from home Tuesday afternoon. It was nice having him home. When he finished working he decided to watch some music videos and of course the kids joined him. Our kids are such addicts to anything electronic:

And for our final day of counting down, we made and decorated cookies for Santa. We all got nice and floury that morning as we rolled out the dough and cut it into shapes:

Then later that day we had some fun decorating them. Lucy spent most of the time licking frosting and eating the candy decorations:

But I still love her!

Penny chilled in her bouncer the whole time:

Tyler spent most of the time decorating this one large cookie:

Steven and Ben did a real good job decorating their cookies. Instead of just blobbing on stuff they actually gave the trees ornaments, the snowmen faces, put wheels on the train,etc. I think having a better selection of candy this year helped with the process:

Here are our works of art:

After making Santa's cookies it was time to open one present- our PJs'! Lucy is getting really good at tearing wrapping paper:

Benny loved his fox Pjs. They had foxes on the feet so when he would run, he would look at his feet so he could see the foxes running too. It was pretty cute! He kept saying "I'm running as fast as a fox!"

I failed Steven in the sizing department again this year. I got him one pair of PJs online that looked too small when I got it, so I bought him a bigger pair at Target. BUT apparently that pair was WAY too big. Ugh! He at least loved the PJs that were too big and wore them anyways (even though I didn't love them, I just got them because they were pretty much the only PJs left at Target- that place had been cleaned out).

The girls seemed happy with their cute wintery PJs:

I got Tyler an awesome t-shirt that appropriately dubs him an Engi-nerd. And his pants had beards and axes on them. Very manly :)

Tyler apparently doesn't think I am normal and bought me a shirt that says "Normal People Scare Me". Ummm...rude.

And here we all are, squished between the couches by the Christmas tree. Yeah for camera timers!

We ended the night by watching "The Christmas Carol"- not the cartoon version but an old black and white version. Tyler loved it- I think he was the only one ;) Once it was over it was off to bed so Santa would come visit!

Gingerbread Houses Part 2

Mondays Christmas Countdown was decorating gingerbread houses with the neighbors. The first time we had done this (with Hatch cousins in AZ) Steven had suffered a major meltdown while trying to make his house. To avoid any epic meltdowns by anyone this time, Tyler spent Sunday afternoon building 8 gingerbread houses out of graham crackers. It was quite impressive!

Monday night we had the 2 kids from next door and the 3 girls from across the street over and the decorating commenced. 

Lucy spent most of the time licking her house and eating frosting:

Benny worked very carefully. Here he is with his finished house:

Steven did not meltdown this time. Instead he spent a VERY long time decorating his house. It was an intense process for him and here he is with his finished product. He insisted on a picture of both the front and back:

Here are our cute neighbor friends decorating. They all seemed to enjoy decorating their houses and surprisingly, they decorated more than they ate candy:

 

We are so lucky that we have such great neighbors to join us in these Christmas Festivities!

Christmas Sunday

Here are all the kids decked out in their Christmas church clothes:

For our Christmas countdown on Sunday we did a Christmas light scavenger hunt. Steven and Ben were given a Bingo sheet with pictures of things to find while looking at Christmas lights (reindeer, Santa, wreath...). We were pretty successful at finding all the things on their card, except for a bell and a poinsettia. Maybe next year someone will have those out for us! 

And a few funnies from the week:

This week we went to buy some (Hershey) Kisses and I learned that Ben thinks that isn't their real name but a cute nickname that his Grandma Brady gave them.

I was being a bad mom and listening to a parody on "Do you want to build a snowman?" called "Do you want to hide a body?" Steven came by so I quickly turned it off and said "That's not a good song." Obviously I didn't turn it off fast enough because he asked, "Why? Is it bad to hide a body?"

Steven put a fake spider on my keyboard and I threw it off and pretended to scream. He apparently liked my reaction and wanted to do it again so he said to me "Close your eyes for a big surprise!"  

Henry Ford Museum

Our countdown to Christmas continues! Saturday we went to the Henry Ford Museum. We actually just went there by default since Steven's Scout Troop was going there and families were invited but it turned out to be a Christmassy event since Santa was there.

The first thing we saw at the Museum was this awesome LEGO City- it was like "LEGO Movie" had come to life!!!! The boys were mesmerized:

Then we saw the trains:

After seeing some cars and having a snack we snuck off from the Scout Troop and went and saw Santa. There was literally NO line so that was pretty awesome but unlike at our church party, Lucy wanted nothing to do with Santa- not even if I held her. So no Lucy in these pictures:

Tyler and Penny were having a blast- can't you tell? 

The boys riding in a corn harvester:

Going for a drive 

These pictures didn't turn out well but all the kids were having a blast dancing on the green screen to a Prince Video. They were really getting into it:

Overall a good time was had. Steven finally got to know the other Scouts better and he finally made some friends. The rest of us enjoyed all the sights but I think Tyler and I were less successful than Steven at making friends because apparently everyone else there finishes having kids at 2. They would just comment to me "You sure got your hands full" or "I bet you're busy" and then walk away...Oh if I could get a dollar every time I heard that "hands full" comment I would be pretty well off...