Christmas at our house

After our Christmas with the Taylor's we celebrated Christmas as a family at our house. After picking our tree out at the tree farm (of course), another part of our annual celebrating and tradition involves baking. I am blessed to have one of THE MOST AMAZING friends ever who joins me not only for crack of dawn morning runs but all my ambitious baking endeavors as well. I'm pretty sure that the only people who may love her more than me (well...her hubby but he doesn't count) are my children...two legged and four legged sort. 

Here she is with big helper Kennedy.

What we had to show after our annual holiday bake-a-thon.

Mmmm...cinnamon rolls & peanut butter fudge (both recipes courtesy of Pioneer Woman)

For the past two years and this year making our third - we take rolls to the local fire station and explain to Kennedy that those men and women work even on our holidays to keep us safe. Both years prior I've gotten pictures of her delivering the goodies, but I didn't get one this year sadly. For memory and documenting purposes though - we did it! =)

I'm still toying with my camera whenever I can. I love this picture of Avery in front of our tree:

This is our tree with all the presents wrapped underneath the evening we let the girls open their gifts. I just didn't think we could take them all with us to DC for them to open on Christmas day so we did it a few days before we left on our trip. A lot of people like for their kids to be home on Christmas day for that reason, but traveling to my family members' homes takes an entire day and I wouldn't want to sacrifice time with them just to be home. I hope that one day we aren't so far and maybe we can have some time with them waking up in our home on Christmas morning.

They had a big ole' time opening gifts! Avery mostly just wanted to eat all the wrappings.

This little piano was a big hit. It's funny how you notice things about your kids at an early age...Avery LOVES music. I mean singing, instrumental, anything and she loves it even more when she realizes she's the one creating it so I just knew she'd get a kick out of this little piano. Kennedy never showed interest in music like that...she was however always skipping, jumping, hopping, running, dancing, etc.....I swore she'd be a gymnast or a ballerina...the verdict is still out.

This was a B.I.G H.I.T.....I'm not about character clothing, but I knew she'd love it so I bit the bullet and got in on clearance at Old Navy for like $2...made it not seem so bad at that price. ;)

This was an item she asked Santa for so she was very pleased she received it.

Very, very pleased indeed...

She opened her presents from her Grandaddy and Gigi too and she was very excited about all of her new Story Reader books. These were awesome on our train trip to DC a few days later.

I think I was more excited about this book than they were, but once they realize we've got the dolls to go with it and they get a little older I think they will be ALL ABOUT it!

Courtesy of Aunt Janine and Uncle Joshie, we now own Elf on the Shelf. It was big fun the remaining days we were home prior to Christmas.

She chose one of the names out of the book for our little elf: Criddle.

Miss Avery got some very cute cloth diapers. We have been cloth diapering for a while but I've been basically on one day off the next because we needed more and they aren't inexpensive. We made sure to put those on her Christmas list (poor kid, right?) and family members delivered because we are in full swing cloth diapering every day now. I'm just happy to be saving money on diapers and now that I have a system down pat it's really nowhere near as hard...or gross as I thought it would be.

Our Christmas at home with the girls was fun. It was nice to just relax and watch them open their gifts from us...not too much fuss and not too many presents...just nice and calm. It was a nice time of just being thankful for them and all the joy they bring to our lives.

The day we left town we had a visitor stay with us for the day. Abby's normal sitter had vacation planned so I was HAPPY to keep Adalyn for the day. The girls had a ton of fun and she got me seriously thinking about how quickly I need to be child-proofing my home because she's moving EVERYWHERE and I know Avery will be soon!

My Grandmother bought this snow globe for my girls a couple of years ago and Adalyn was as big of a fan of it as my girls are. I swear the thing probably cost $5 but you would think it was THE BEST THING EVER! So funny.

It was kind of hard to pack with three kiddoes but I did o.k. between naps and managed to get us out by the kids bedtime that night. More to come about Christmas with my side of the family and the train we took there and back.