Christmas...

We had a great Christmas that was spent with people that we love! Christmas Eve started off with decorating cookies at Auntie's house. Dailey is at such a fun age & had so much fun decorating them. She would literally empty an entire container of colored sugar on one cookie, then yell "Oh, it's beautiful!" We had a great time & had quite the mess when we were done. Here is her finished product...

After we were done with cookies we (Sis, Dailey, Skylee & I) picked up Landon & headed to lunch at Dakota Cafe. Since Dailey had ate countless sugar cookies at that point, lunch was a little crazy! :) After lunch we were on the hunt for white elephant gifts for the gift exchange with my family that night. We each ended up with one silly gift & one normal gift. We headed to my mom's about 6 to celebrate with my family. It was the first time in years that all of my aunts, uncles, cousins & grandparents have all been together & it was fun. My Aunt Karla was home from Belize, Jen was home from Phoenix and Grandpa Del was able to be there with us too. He is on a break from chemo for the next few weeks & is pretty proud of the fuzzy hair he is growing back! After the party at Mom's we headed home to get ready for Santa to come. We headed to bed fairly early with lots of excitment for what Christmas Day was going to bring!

I got up bright & early on Christmas (before the girls & Justin even thought about opening their eyes) so I could get ready before Dailey woke up to open her gifts. After I got ready everyone was still snuggled in their blankets sound asleep & I didn't want to wake any of them up. Dailey was a really sleepy girl & looked like she had no intentions of waking anytime soon, so I finally left her door open, turned on the hall lights & waited for her to wake on her own. She gets really grumpy when we have to wake her up, so I let her do it on her own. When she finally woke up she told me that she wanted to go to Daddy's bed to watch cartoons. I let her snuggle in & wake up a little more before I told her that we could go to the living room to see what Santa brought her. She got a very concerned look on her face & asked if Santa was IN the living room, but once I assured her that he just put her presents under the tree & left, she was fine. Santa knew how much she loves Dora & all of her gifts from him were wrapped in Dora paper, she loved it! She ripped all of the gifts open & was so excited to see what each of them were. After she was done with hers, she opened Skylee's & said "oh, so cute!" with each one.

We were out the door by 8am to head to my mom's house. The night before I had made a breakfast casserole so as soon as we got there we put the casserole in the oven & opened our gifts. Santa brought Logan & Landon LOTS of toys, legos & a Wii. They opened all the games to the Wii first & had already told Sis & Travis which games they were going to take to their house & which ones they were going to bring to ours. I don't think they clued in to what they were about to open! :) Here is Logan after opening it...

We all ended up with lots of goodies, but the best part was just being able to be together as a family.

We left for Jack & Mary's about 11 & spent the rest of the day there. We opened our gifts, played with the kids new toys & just enjoyed being together. While Justin was outside getting Dailey's snowmobile ready to give to her he got called for a fire. Because he was gone for a few hours she didn't end up getting her snowmobile on Christmas. It probably worked out ok though, because she was really tired & it was really cold outside.

Today the girls & I are just hanging out at home & finding places to put all the new stuff we got. It's really cold out, so we are going to stay inside as much as possible. While the girls are sleeping this afternoon I'm going to box up old toys that don't get played with anymore, take down the tree & try to get our house somewhat back to normal.

We hope that everyone had a great Christmas!!