Christmas 2015 and New Years 2016

Christmas is always highly anticipated around here.  We did our best to celebrate in all the right ways. 

 

We made cookies and tried to keep up with our 25 Days of Christ.

We had a party, the only pictures of which are of two of the smaller guests.

We were the lucky recipients of a pretty elaborate 12 Days of Christmas.  One night we opened our front door to find a bowl of 5 goldfish.  The kids were ecstatic but Dan, picturing the high probability of tears at the first floater, immediately told them the life span of a goldfish is about a week, just to head off any future disappointment.

By Christmas Eve we flushed the last one.  It was fun while it lasted.

The kids in their Christmas Eve jammies.  

And on Christmas Morning, before going downstairs...

I don't know what happened but I didn't take many pictures of the present opening action.  But I did get Jack in his pool of balls when he finally woke up.

Finn's greatest treasure was the garbage truck from Grandma Linda and Grandpa Don.

We were so lucky to have my parents with us.

The only thing I wanted from my parents for Christmas was for my mom to help me with the basement.  So we dressed up in our shower caps and painted the ceilings.

And the walls, and an entertainment center.

My mom is seriously the best though.  We spent an evening scouring the Goodwills nearby for items that could be decorative but not fragile, since the basement is home to a lot of roughhousing and football throwing.  We found some wreaths that seemed promising but decided to sleep on it.  By morning, when we decided they were perfect, and the only thing that would work, and that we just had to have them, and we showed back up at the Goodwill, they were gone! After sadly walking through the store in disbelief, I spied them in someone else's shopping cart.  

And that's when the magic happened.  I begged my mom to try to go buy them off of the woman and she agreed to try.  But I was literally so embarrassed I hid in the shoe section and after about 5 minutes, she showed back up with the wreaths hanging off her arm.  

My basement and I will be forever grateful.  These after pictures would be way more awesome if they were sitting next to some before's.

Unfortunately, I forgot to take them.

Besides the painting, shelf hanging, wreath stealing, and pillow sewing, we made decorative shutters that we ended up using more like cornices because we liked the height it gave to our low ceiling-ed room.

We also managed to squeeze in a date to the new Star Wars movie.  My mom was a fan of the recliners.

Luke finished his Kylo Ren ship in just a few days.

Ava enjoyed getting to hang out with one of the young women in our ward who gave her a little makeover.

And then we rung in the new year with games, food, and friends who have become very dear to us, the Manuele's.

The next morning Max looked how we all felt as he laid like this for a good 30 minutes.

But life is good.  I haven't yet gotten tired of our house being the track for all the plasma cars we got for Christmas, especially when they pass through with a chubby shirtless hitchhiker.