Christmas is definitely a favorite holiday around the Young house. I still believe that being a parent at Christmas is even better than being a kid (though I know that no child would ever agree with that sentiment).
We started our Christmas festivities on Christmas Eve. We follow a lot of traditions in our family because we like the idea of having these traditions and maybe one day our children will pass down some of them to their own families (as we have). Our Christmas Eve always starts first thing with opening pjs from Santa. This is a tradition held over from my childhood. My mom started this with my brother and me many years ago and it has just sort of stuck. This year (as with the last year or two), our elf brought us our pjs from Santa. The kids were super excited to open a gift on Christmas Eve morning and both of them loved their pjs. (Steven's family always opened 1 gift on Christmas Eve as well but it wasn't necessarily pjs so this is also somewhat like what his family did growing up.) My dream of all of us having matching pjs didn't pan out this year as the ones I really wanted were never available in all of our sizes. I'm hoping that next year we can make that work though. We might just have to start shopping earlier. Anyway, Santa did match the kids fairly well while still finding a gown for Kenzie and super adorable pants for Will. They loved them and couldn't wait to wear them on Christmas Eve.
Our next activity of the day is a Young family tradition as this is always something that Steven did with his parents and sister growing up. It may not have been done on Christmas Eve, but we like to reserve it for that day as it is a special activity we all do together. We set out to make a ton of Christmas cookies. This was so much fun this year. Usually it starts with me rolling and cutting the dough and then Steven and the kids decorate. That typically means that Steven does most of it while the kids sort of pretend to help but this year, a switch went off in Kenzie's head and she decided she could handle it all on her own. And she did. She did a great job. We gave her a few pointers and off she went. Will is also in a super independent stage (i.e., the typical toddler "I do it!") so he did most of his own cookies without help as well. Steven and I were nearby to help but we worked like a well oiled machine this year. I rolled and cut, Kenzie and Will decorated, Steven put in the oven and then removed them and put them on the cooling racks. Repeat. We probably did cookies in record time and everyone really seemed to enjoy the process. Both kids also wanted to be able to eat a cookie as soon as possible so they were working as quickly as they could.
We then sprinkled our reindeer food on the lawn for Santa's reindeer. We made the reindeer food as one of our advent activities and the kids like to make sure it gets put out. It is our alternative to leaving carrots for the reindeer. Will took the job seriously and literally and kept trying to "feed" the light up reindeer in our yard. Kenzie made sure that it was spread near and far so that each reindeer would get some.
In the midst of all of that we exchanged some gifts with our neighbors' kiddos. We love that we live in a neighborhood where we have made some great friends and we are all in a similar stage in life. Our kids are different ages but all within the same range. Side note: we are doing our progressive dinner with them this coming weekend and we are excited about it.
Before we knew it, it was time for lunch and Will's nap (and Kenzie's rest time) so that we could start getting ready for church. This year, because Christmas fell on Sunday, our church did not have a Christmas Eve service and elected to only have Christmas Day services so we wanted to find another option for Christmas Eve. We enjoy attending church on Christmas Eve and then going to dinner after. We decided that we would try the children centered service at the church that Kenzie's preschool is a part of. We got all dressed up and headed out. One super cool thing about this service was that since it was geared to children, they used glow sticks instead of candles which the kids thought was awesome. The church was fairly different from ours despite the fact that it is Baptist and our church has roots in Southern Baptist but we enjoyed it. During the service, they invited all the kids to come up and sit on the stage to listen to a short sermon. Kenzie ran right up. To our surprise, Will followed. They sat together and Kenzie even raised her hand and said, "lights" when asked what types of decorations they liked at Christmas time. There was also a short-ish sermon for everyone else. That is where it sort of broke down for us. The kids were getting bored. We tried to keep them occupied with drawing on some papers we found which worked a little. Will laid on the floor for a bit. It wasn't crowded so he wasn't bothering anyone. He also made funny faces at the people behind us for a while because the man back there was doing it back. I appreciate that person keeping him entertained for a while. It wasn't terrible but it wasn't as easy as it usually would be in our own church. Plus, this was a new place for us and we didn't know anyone... and no one knew us so we were trying to be on our best behavior. Regardless, we made it. The music was nice and we realized how many Christmas hymns Kenzie actually knows. The sermon was pretty good. I only listened to part of it because I was working on keeping two small children entertained. Having two mobile and loud kids multiplied the amount of effort it takes to keep them quiet and entertained for any period of time. Last year, Will wasn't walking yet and was still somewhat quiet. Now, he talks almost more than Kenzie, is louder, and both kids are like energizer bunnies so... yeah. That's our life though. Thankfully this service was almost entirely young families and there were even a few little ones running around on one side so at least we were able to keep them entertained enough in our pew (and at least we were the only people in that pew.)
After that we headed to Buca di Beppo for Christmas Eve dinner. We have been going to Buca since we have been doing Christmas in our own house. The entire family loves it. I'm so glad we had a reservation because it was CRAZY in there. We were seated right away but our table was not in the best location. We were right along a main walkway which doesn't bode well when you have kids. They kept wanting to get up to potty so it wasn't fun as far as that is concerned. We could have used a traffic light. The best part was watching everyone coming through the restaurant trying to find the bathroom or the exit because the set up is so weird. They were wandering back and forth a lot and it was pretty funny. Also, because it was so crowded, dinner took a while to get to us. The kids did pretty well because we had bread and then they colored for a while. Once, when I took Will to potty he tried to join two other families that already had their food. He walked by flashing this huge smiley and making a point of mentioning every item of food on their table as a question. As if he was asking for a bite in the most unassuming way he knew how. Everyone thought it was hilarious. Finally, we were brought our salad. Kenzie ate all the pepperoni and salami out of it and then the other three of us polished off everything else. Will ate an entire serving... which actually makes me a bit sad because I totally would have liked that left over. Haha! Finally our spaghetti and meatballs came. The kids scarfed it down. Kenzie ate a lot of the meatball (which is a half pound) and some spaghetti and Will ate more spaghetti than Steven or I did. The waitress was cracking up because anytime she walked by, he was shoving another huge mouthful into his mouth. For the first time in the history of us going to Buca, we left there with barely a single serving of spaghetti and nothing else. These kids polished off almost everything we ordered.
Dinner took a pretty long time because of the delays in getting food so when we finally got home, it was getting fairly late. We put the pjs on the kids and all sat down together to read The Night Before Christmas. Steven reads it to us every year. We almost had a breakdown before the book though when Will wanted to remain naked instead of putting pjs on. He broke down in tears but calmed down about 2 pages into the book. By the end, he was all smiles which allowed me to get a few cute pictures of the kids in their pjs. The kids put out 3 Christmas cookies and some chocolate milk for Santa. Specifically... 3. They decided this was the optimum Santa number for some reason. Whatever works.
Both kids were in bed and OUT pretty quickly. Luckily, Steven and I already had everything put together so we just had to wait for Santa to actually show up. And he did. =) We got smart this year and we were in bed by 11 or so because knew that the kids would be up pretty early.
The kids actually "slept in" a bit on Christmas morning. Will has been waking up sort of early lately and I have to go in and tell him that it's still nighttime and make him go back to sleep but he slept in until just before 7. Kenzie was up as soon as I walked into Will's room asking if she could come out. We figured it would just be mean to make them wait any more. So, we all got up and went into the living room together to see what Santa brought.
Kenzie immediately yelled, "Santa got me a new bike!!" and jumped up and down. She was so excited. Will ran his little self right up to his 4 wheeler and jumped on. They were super excited. They wanted to tear into every present they had right at that moment. I love this part of Christmas. The magic of the entire thing and the excitement of being a kid and getting something new. I love watching our kids experience it. We let them play around on the opened toys for a bit and then sat down to open our stocking gifts and other gifts from Santa. After that we started the cinnamon rolls for breakfast and opened our other gifts from and to one another. Both kids got some nice things. Steven got me a canvas print of our family beach picture that we used on our Christmas card this year which is probably my favorite picture of our family ever, I think. It's so "us". I'm so excited to hang it when we take down the Christmas decor after this coming weekend. Steven and I got each other shirts for the Star Wars 10k race. And apparently we have been married far too long because we inadvertently matched them. Truthfully, mine was on my "wish list" but I didn't think he would get it and I thought he might choose another color but he went with red. I chose a red Darth Vader Mickey for him so we will have matching shirts now for the race (and Disney trips if we wish). Kenzie's most exciting gift, other than her bike, would probably be Lucky Ducks. We have played it once since she got it and it is super cute. Will was most excited with his 4 wheeler and it wasn't long before he was riding it standing up. In nothing but underwear none the less because when I got him dressed, he tried to run away naked but I insisted that he put something on. The kid would be naked constantly if we let him.
Eventually we had breakfast and then Steven had to get ready to leave for church. He was doing tech for the 10am service. When he left I prepped the kids for church as we planned to attend the 11am so that we could attend together. We had a great time seeing our church family and celebrating Jesus's birth. The kids were super excited to tell everyone what they got for Christmas and wish everyone a Merry Christmas. We sang some Christmas carols and listened to a short sermon. The kids behaved well. Much better than they did the night before. I think part of it was the comfort of being in their normal place. They pretty much ran us out of there afterwards though because they wanted to get back to their presents. Haha!
Once we got home we prepped for Nana, Papa, Uncle Rick and Aunt Danielle to come over. They arrived around 1 and we sat around talking and eating appetizers/lunch for a while. Eventually Will had to nap so we put him to bed and put Kenzie in her room to do some rest time while the adults started opening gifts. Kenzie came out after a bit and opened gifts with us. When we were finished, Will woke up and we let him come out and open all of his gifts. Because of how Christmas worked out this year with church on Christmas Day, we had to reorganize how we did everything with the family and opened gifts in shifts due to nap time. It was different but it worked out okay and we still had plenty of family time.
We had dinner just after that. We went with ziti this year. It was super yummy.
We were all too full to do dessert immediately so we took the kids new toys outside to play. Kenzie rode her bike with some help along the sidewalk around our house and Will drove his little 4 wheeler all around.
We had dessert after that and then everyone headed home. We had a great, but tiring, Christmas this year. We missed not having Grandma, Grandaddy, Aunt Juju, Uncle E, and Cousin Evie around but we know they had a great Christmas in Atlanta this year. On Thursday of this week we will be going to Palm Coast for Christmas 2 with Grandma and Grandaddy so that will be fun. Plus, it means a trip to the beach (though we won't swim) so we are all excited.
Every year Christmas gets more and more exciting. I'm loving this stage in our family's life. The kids are at such a fun age for things like this. Kenzie was so excited this year. She has been for years but she is so much better able to tell you about whey she is excited now. I'm loving seeing Will morph into this little boy with a joy for life and watch him take in all the new experiences. It was so much fun. I'm already excited for next year. =)
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