Merry Christmas!

Yes, Christmas was about two weeks ago. And yes, I'm finally posting about it.

This was the first Christmas that we spent totally by ourselves- we didn't travel anywhere and no one came to visit us. And it was actually quite nice. Don't get me wrong. We love being with family and the big Christmas dinner and all that stuff. But at the same time it's nice to start our own family traditions for Christmas. We pretty much spent the day just hanging out in our jammies while the kids played with their loot.

Here's what our tree looked like before the kids got a hold of the presents underneath:

We actually didn't get all that many pics of the kids. We were just so laid-back about everything that we kinda forgot.

This is one of the probably two pictures we got of Melanie on her first Christmas. And just for the record, Taylor picked out her Christmas jammies. I don't usually go for lime green.

Notice the quilts they're sitting on? Erik has his "blankie" that he LOVES. Well, it's looking a little homely. So I thought I'd make him a new one naively hoping that the old one could be replaced. Then I thought I'd make Taylor one, too. Then I couldn't make the boys one and not make Melanie one. So they all got one.

And no, the blankie wasn't replaced. Now he wants both of the blankets in his bed when he goes to sleep. Great. But at least Taylor actually claims the one I made him as his blanket. And sleeps with it every night.

And Melanie spits up and poops on hers.

After they got done unwrapping everything we realized that we hadn't gotten a picture of all three of them in front of the tree. Hence the trash.

I feel like we should have gotten more pictures of Melanie since it was her first Christmas. But here's the second picture of the whopping two we took.

The boys got a gazillion (yes, that's an exact number) hot wheels for Christmas. Not surprisingly, they still fight over them.

This year I decided to try and do something to get us more focused on the Savior. So a week before Christmas we all sat down and decided what we were going to give to Jesus for Christmas, seeing as it's His birthday and all. So we all drew a picture of what our gift would be, put it in a box, and wrapped it up to put under the tree. Taylor gave Him "good choices" and Erik gave Him a bunch of crayon scribbles. We kept reminding each other throughout the week of what we were trying to give to the Savior. On Christmas morning we opened it up and talked about the gift that we gave to Christ and how we can always improve. I loved it, and I think it's a worthy tradition to keep.