a little christmas joy

 as i type, i'm watching the twilight zone marathon, which is for me the only way to properly welcome the new year. i'm thinking of what i want to commemorate for all posterity about our most recent christmas break. busyness has dominated along with eating without restraint. we bought the kids great gifts but we missed out on some of my favorite holiday traditions. i suppose it is our season of life to be busy and i also suppose this will help me prioritize what i want to see happen in my family in the upcoming year. i'm trying to see the positive and not dwell on the shortcomings of the season. hopefully, the kids will remember the good and not the stress. i'll remember this and do better next year.

my christmas break highlights include my sister visiting and the two of us laughing all through the closing song during relief society because i was singing my heart out that ending up braying like a donkey. i think the kids have enjoyed staying up past bedtime and watching star wars over and over and over. thomas acquired a new client, which is great, but also had to deal with new client babysitting. he asked me to leave the christmas tree up extra long this year since he hasn't been home much and still want to enjoy the tree. 
everyone's favorites:
herschel's ball pit, which he hasn't gotten much use out of since christmas day because the big kids also feel the need to sit in it. 

athena blythe is a pretty big fan of the paw patrol(no job too big, no pup too small! aaah aaaah aaaaah! paw patrol!) so i bought her the 9 figurine set. i think we still have 8 of them. 

i got a great deal on a couple of kindle fires for the big kids. scarlett was pretty pleased. especially since i downloaded the LDS gospel library on it! what 8 year old doesn't want that??? this was probably reagan's favorite gift too. and athena blythe's though she doesn't realize they don't belong to her. they're so popular that they've ALL already lost kindle privileges! 

i need to document reagan's latest green state shirt du jour. he asked for iowa but california was a lot easier to find. 

my favorite thing that the kids got was age and size appropriate bikes with all functioning pedals! my dream is to become a biking family and get one of those giant bike trailer hitches for my yukon. 

(athena blythe's is a little big for her but she's also a giantess so it's only a matter of time.)

my favorite thing we ate was this giant nutella oreo cream cheese ball. like buttah, but much worse for you. this is the only other way i like oreos, besides cookies n' cream ice cream. 

it rained almost non-stop during christmas break so my favorite activity is pretty much the only activity, playing at the park and eating at a pretty average mexican restaurant.

the heather in her natural habitat.

right before it started raining again. not much progress, but hey, she is only three. 

family craft(sticking pre-adhesive santa stickers onto a template. that's as crazy as it gets) and then uno tournament. it was a clean sweep by uncle dan, or "fun"cle dan. 

best friends activity:

in an attempt to make our christmas break more memorable activity-wise, we met up with our friends camille and lydia for some culture at the local paint your own pottery place. it cost a million dollars. i'll let you know when that place goes out of business. 

favorite christmas decorations:

i found these giant stars at target and i strung them up on my staircase with my real evergreen garland, that i will never buy again because i simply can't vacuum that much. but i really loved the stars and i hope target has them again next year because i will buy a hundred of them. i was trying really hard to not have a purposefully tinsel strewn tacky christmas like i have done in years past. i may resurrect some tinsel for next year because i do love a little tacky. scarlett is a big tacky decorations fan. things got a little crazy in the dollar tree one day and we came home with 4 jumbo plastic yard candy canes. fortunately, three of them have broken and 1 is about to mysteriously disappear. 

reagan was a little upset about not being "included" in the decorations picture. there you go, posterity!