December 26th . . .

. . .is the one day of the year that I am okay with my house looking like this:

STUFF everywhere. Brian and I are pretty tidy people, but we let it go on December 26th. Presents, paper, boxes, candy, and clothes litter our family room floor and I kind of like it. I guess I should note that Brian was impatient this year and we had it cleaned up by four o'clock. But still that's almost a whole day of a crazy, Christmas explosion in our house. He even wanted to take down the tree today, but I convinced him that we had plenty of other days to do that. Let Christmas linger a little bit.



On that note here's how our holiday went down:



Sledding at Thanksgiving Point


We were among a select few who got to go sledding in the amphitheatre at Thanksgiving Point on Christmas Eve. While most kids were flying down the hill over and over again, McKay was of course being an animal in between the few runs he took.

I'm thinking he's a snow cow here. After his second time down the hill with Jana, he wandered off in the powder at the bottom on all fours, eating snow. This was when the snow cow was born. And he ate snow for the rest of the afternoon. He still loved the sledding part, but he just found a way to entertain himself while waiting for his next turn. I don't know know what else to say about this, except that this boy is pretending ALL the time. I don't really know what to make of it. We have rules that at dinner time and bedtime we have to be ourselves. I just love him.

After sledding we headed over to Brian's parent's house to spend the evening. The highlight for McKay was riding on Grandad's snow plow four wheeler. I don't know who was happier about this, McKay or Grandad.

After a yummy dinner all the kids acted out the nativity. Acted? I guess not acted since the oldest one was only three. They dressed up and were cute though.

Grandma made all the kids the most adorable matching jammies. Brian's sisters even got matching pajama pants. It was very cute seeing them all run around dressed the same, but it made it seem like there were a lot more of them! They all loved it.

Christmas Morning

McKay got a space train set and I'm wondering why Santa settled on this as his present since it is pretty huge and our house is not. But McKay loves it. And I think Brian loves it too. Ellery loved the puppy that was left for her, but as soon as she saw the m&m filled candy cane in her stocking that's all she cared about. She was ready to eat those m&m's and didn't care about anything else. And we let her.


Christmas Day
Later that day McKay and some of the aunts made a snowman in the backyard at Grandma's. He kind of looks like a snow-mosquito here, but he looked much better once his face was adorned with a nice carrot smile.

We spent the evening at my parent's house and had a fun time with the whole family. We played games, opened presents, and my mom made several soups served in yummy bread bowls. Ellery spent most of the night climbing on boxes and thinking she was amazing for doing so. She also got quite excited when she and Brian tried out the new baby carrier hiker thing my parent's got us. She's very interested in having people acknowledge her and clap when she thinks she's doing something important. McKay had fun playing with his cousins and snitching his fair share of treats all night.

We had a great couple days and I was so glad we didn't have to travel anywhere far to be with the ones we love. Hope everyone else had a merry Christmas as well.