Christmas 2021

Christmas 2021 was perfect in so many ways. 

These are the things I want to remember about Christmas 2021:

*ALL of my babies believe in Santa. How wonderful that I've had the magic of Christmas dancing around my home for 10 years now! TEN WHOLE YEARS. 

*Christmas Eve was 80 degrees and we sprinkled "Magic Reindeer food" on our front lawn before we went to bed to 'help the reindeer find their way to our home." (It was sparkly glitter and oatmeal.)

*Christmas was 75 degrees so even though I don't love warm Christmases, Lucy got an electric Vespa from Santa so she was able to ride it around all the live long day. She LOVED it!

*Because it was so balmy out, I bought fake snow for them! It's the coolest stuff. It looks and feels JUST like real snow, except it's not cold- win/win! They each had a big bowl full of it that they played with outside for hours.  Every time a family or a person walked by (apparently a lot of people were going on walks on Christmas!) Sully would yell "MERRY CHRISTMAS!" It was adorable. 

*They were so happy and well-behaved! I truly think this was the first year that there were no fits on Christmas! No one was too territorial over their new swag and everyone was extremely happy and cheerful! (Also worth noting: It was Piper's first birthday {the week before} that she didn't cry! She was happy from sun-up to sun-down and very generous with sharing her new toys.)

*There was plenty of Mistletoing!♥️

*Piper performed in front of us all for the 1st time on the piano! She played “Jingle Bells” and it was so cute! I don’t have a photo- just a video, sorry!

*The girls are finally old enough to help me with some small tasks in the kitchen on Christmas Eve! I put them in charge of peeling carrots for Pop's Smidt's Hot Carrot recipe (a new tradition of ours!)  and all the potatoes for Potato casserole and they loved doing it! It saved me SO much time and it was fun working in the kitchen with them while they were doing something that was enjoyable for them. Shawn had Sully help him put toothpicks in the teriyaki later and he loved that as well.

*They always sleep together on Christmas Eve and wake us up by ringing bells for us on Christmas morning.  We told them they HAD to wait until 8am to ring the bells (we SO aren't morning people!).  We woke up at 7:30 to get the music going and the cameras set up and sure enough, RIGHT AT 8 those bells started ringing! They told us they had been up since 6 just waiting. Sweet kiddos!

*Speaking of Christmas Eve and sleeping together- they wore matching PJs and Shawn read them " 'Twas the Night Before Christmas" then we locked them in Sully's room (yes! Locked them 😂) and went to work downstairs being "Santa." We *HAVE* to lock them in otherwise they WILL come out during the Santa set-up and I can't risk that.  Yes, this was definitely Lucy's last year of believing (she's asking lots of questions and showing signs of doubt) but I don't want her to find out by catching me in the act!

*We added a new tradition last year of reading the story of the birth of Christ in Luke on Christmas Eve. But this year we added more to it! We lit a big red candle in honor of Jesus' birthday, said a prayer, and blew out the candle once we said "Amen." The candle is only lit for such a short amount of time that we know we can re-light it for many years to come.  It is now called our "Jesus' Candle."

All in all, Christmas and the days leading up to it were pure perfection.  The kids were SOOOO amazing this whole Christmas break! They've never been so well-behaved for such a long period of time EVER.  I feel like the bubble is going to pop and we'll all fall down.  I don't know. My kids are just usually HARD.  But over Thanksgiving break AND Christmas break they were just GOOD. They all 3 payed together almost all day everyday. It was so delicious seeing Lucy join in and play with her brother and sister again. Usually it's just Piper and Sully and Lucy's off on her own. But she PLAYED again! It was so heartwarming! 

We woke up, opened gifts, and the kids played the rest of the day. It was wonderful and magical and fun. A hard year... but an amazing Christmas. 

I think she’s too young for acrylic nails. She doesn’t. “SO MANY” of her friends have them. (They’re 10 and 11!) I didn’t want her virgin nails to be ruined! But she got some money for Christmas and from the moment she opened it she’s been begging for nails non-stop- like incessantly- until I finally gave in a couple days after Christmas. I figured she’ll love them and get her moneys worth, or she’ll hate them and never want them again Either way, I went and had my nails done too. So I was able to have one-on-one time with my girl and that made us BOTH happy )

And I’m signing off for the year with our only 2 pictures that turned out from our family photo shoot in Turks and Caicos (don’t look close at the drone ones- we are soaking wet!). There was a lot of editing to make it look like daytime and not black skies with that storm I talked about in our Turks and Caicos post. But we got something and it’s a vacation I’ll never forget. The definite bright spot in a dark year.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year everyone!