Christmas 2017

I wanted to write about our holiday season before Christmas came and gone and now we are well into January and I just decided I better throw a little out there before it all slips away and next Christmas came without any recording of our first Christmas with the 3 kids. I’ll start with Taylor since there’s the least to say. Taylor just started sitting in a high chair, her jumper, and eating little bits of baby food. I lugged her chunky booty to all of the festivites and she loved it. She is such an easy baby (though still not a great sleeper but she’s taken a turn for the better at 7.5 months) and she is all smiles being out and about. She wore her cute little Christmas outfits with her sister and enjoyed all the sights. I took the 3 of them to magnolia gardens festivites by myself and I felt so lucky to be able to do so. We own a retail store and I still got off many Saturdays during the festive time to spend with my sweet babies. Anyways, Taylor fell asleep in the carrier and Pell & Eli enjoyed the festivness even though it was 30 degrees and wet. We froze but rushed home, changed to warm clothes and cuddled up with hot chocolate, a movie, and some snacks. I’ll remmeber this day forever I think because it was such a nice time. It’ll just be one of the moments I look back on when the years have gone by too fast. We also did many other fun things. Saw the lights, went to many festivals, made lots of crafts, a gingerbread house. We did a countdown chain and had our chocolate countdown from Nana. We saw santa a few times, watched lots of christmas movies, and read plenty of Christmas stories. Every time christmas passes I wonder if I did enough to give the kids good memories to look back on. When I type it out it certainly seems like it but the month or so we celebrate seems to go so fast. Pell didn’t say a whole lot of words this christmas but she learned “snowman” and “santa” pretty well by the end of it. She liked Santa. She wasn’t about decorating cookies or gingerbread houses. The concept of decorating food and not eating it was a little out of her relm of understanding. She made crafts with us and did a good job and she participated in all festivites. She liked it all but wasn’t overly excited. Maybe festivals and all were a bit overwhelming or maybe she was just like “yeah, this is what it should be”. Who knows. She is super cute though. We rode around the block Christmas Eve night and she LOVED it. Just laughed and laughed with her cousins and Eli while she fell all ove the place in the back of the car. We didn’t make them buckle up and I sat back there with them. Eli loved every bit of festive things we did. He was always looking forward to frestivities and asking to do them. Every night he would talk about how excited he was for Christmas to come. He still wasn’t old enough to narrow down a great gift list for us but he knew he was getting gifts and he had a LONG list of things he continued to add to throughout the season. He knew who Santa was and he could get a little nervous and shy whenever we would go to meet santa. It was pretty cute. I know he lost a little sleep thinking about Christmas. He had a Christmas preformance at school and he did very good. We gave his class our seed characters with a feeder and he was so proud of his gift to his classmates. Christmas morning Eli was the first to get up and we walked passed Cj & Daniels gifts, straight to his and just stood there for a second shaking his hands with a huge smile on his face. He had to run upstairs to tell Cj to come down and the kids were all smiles looking at there gifts. Eli was THRILLED with his battle bots which is his current obbsession. The one struggle we had this year is that this was Elis first real memorable Christmas. He hardly remembered last year and couldn’t quite remember how it all went. The week of Christmas was so busy with our work schedule, family, and parties that he lost some of his manners. He kept wanting more gifts or being vocal about ones he didnt like (which changed quickly after a little talk) but the wanting more didn’t really stop and so I’m hoping we can work on this throughout the year. Overall, it was an amazing Christmas. We broke all kinds of records at the store this holiday season and still managed to create so many awesome family memories! It was nice to have family in town, especially all of Elis cousins. It just makes my heart to happy to see all the kids together and that Eli, Pell, & Taylor get to have cousins they know and love. It will be difficult to top this Christmas next year but I know we can do it. Eli will be that much more aware and so will Pell. Taylor will also be so cute and much more fun as well! Can’t wait!!! Danielle