Christmas and New Years

Christmas Eve Jammies!

Can't have cookies without the milk

Payton kept adding more to the plate. Must have thought Santa really needed them...ALL!

Christmas Morning-Yup! It's the best picture I got!

It's not that Christmas and New Years wasn't worth blogging about. It's just that I haven't felt much like blogging about it...yet. I didn't take a ton of pictures on Christmas Day but we covered Christmas Eve pretty well. After our dinner of steak and eggs {which the kids hated and mom and dad loved!} we cleaned things up and got ready to have a special "night before Christmas" moment together. We talked about the real meaning of Christmas, which Payton seems to get {yeah!} and then we watched a DVD about the Nativity. After that we decided to make some cookies for Santa. While we were making them we had a knock at the door and a secret present was delivered. Inside were PJ's for the kids and a movie to watch, "How the Grinch Stole Christmas". We finished the cookies, the movie and getting things ready for Santa {and his reindeer} and then it was off to bed. I had a few presents I still needed to wrap and Payton could hear me in the other room. He kept saying, "You have to go to bed, mom! Santa won't come if you're awake."

Christmas was pretty simple this year. Nothing too hard for Santa to bring. In fact, Santa kinda fell asleep and Mrs. Clause had to pinch hit this year. Luckily there wasn't anything that needed assembly. The kids did pretty well, only coming in to wake us up around 7am. 30 minutes later, Christmas was over, breakfast was started and the day had begun. The rest is history.

New Year's Eve was spent at G-pa & G-ma Turek's house. Todd stayed home with Julia and I took two of Tiff's boys with us. Tiffani had her baby so she was going to spend the night at home {for very good reason}. We didn't really do much but play the wii. I am totally regretting the fact that not picture was taken while the boys hula hooped, threw snowballs, flew like birds...and everything else Aunt Kandice made them do. Then at midnight we did the pots and pans thing, came back inside {because it was FREEZING!} and the younger kids went back to the Wii while the bigger kids played the "What if" game. Then we called it a night and the start of a new year.

Ready to bang pots and pans

 Tiff had her baby {#5-yup! She's nuts!} on December 30th. Her name is Alaina and she's the cutest little thing! I love snuggling with her, when I get the chance. Even Julia enjoyed holding her. Too bad little Laini didn't agree.

Update

Our 11foot tree. We've never been able to have one this big before. It got it's own room because there really wasn't another good place for it.

So I missed Christmas, New Years, and Julia's blessing blogs...well the blessing day got posted in pictures. I didn't take many Christmas Day pictures this year. I did take a couple of Julia with her cousin Riley at g-ma Julie's. They're only 4months apart and I hope they'll be good friends.

Julia and Riley Calico

--there really is a size difference here--

Julia ready to go to Grandma's Christmas Day

We did video the boys Christmas morning but that's about all I've got. Here are a couple "day after" pictures with the kids playing with their new toys. Dr. Payton checking out Julia with the new Doctor kit from g-ma Julie

New years was spent at G-ma & G-pa Turek's playing games and eating AWESOME food! Loved the wingers wings/sticky fingers..mmmm. Porter and Julia sharing a moment...

and then not wanting to share the moment with KhloeePorter fell asleep on the couch around 10:45 so we decided to call it a night.Todd had to be up early the next morning anyway. Payton loved playing with his cousins/aunt/uncles in the Bunco game. I called my parents on our way home seeing it was just after 11:00 our time I knew it was after midnight there. To my surprise they were awake and watching a movie. Go figure! A mission does change you!

New Year Day was spent trying to get things ready for Julia's big day that Sunday. Todd did take Payton hunting with him so it was just Porter, Julia and me! We even had lunch at McDonald's. It was nice to have a day with children without the fighting and screaming.

Julia's blessing day was wonderful! Todd did a great job on the blessing and it was fun to have all my family there (except Rick and his family & of course my parents) and Todd's grandparents from Santa Clara, his parents and his brothers and sister. We had lunch in our garage--not the most extravagant but definitely doable--I loved having them all at my house. I laughed because after we were cleaning up when everyone left Todd kept making comments about there being sparkles all over the place. He thought it was from the Christmas tree of something but I reminded him there had been a bunch of teenage girls here that day. I told him it was just a sign of things to come with having a girl. He told me his girl would never wear sparkles! I'll remind him every time she does.

It had been a great past few weeks but I'm glad we're back to everyday life again. Now I've got to get my rump in gear for the 5k my sisters and I are going to be running this year. (Go Fit 5!) Guess it's good it's a new year and that means new goals.