Friday, December 25, 2015

Christmas 2015

This Christmas was completely wonderful from beginning to end. Well, maybe except for Boy Howdy's reluctance to indulge his mama. Christmas Eve for me growing up was the spiritual night, the night to reenact the nativity and sing beautiful Christmas songs. Cheeks was all over playing Mary with her Baby Jesus all wrapped up but Boy Howdy wanted nothing to do with being Joseph, a shepherd or anything else. So instead, we tried our best to reenact it using the little people's nativity my parents gave us a few years ago. Despite his reticence I think we adequately, albeit shortly captured the reverent spirit of Christmas.

Another Booren tradition is opening the presents from the children to each other. At the beginning of the month, I took the kids to Target to pick out presents they wanted to give to us and to each other. Hats is what they chose. Awesome. What wasn't so awesome was having to wait until Christmas to use them.

A few other Boy Howdy issues for the night - not wanted to wear the special Christmas PJs I made for him and his sister and not wanting to stand nicely in front of the tree so I could take a picture.

 

The next morning, Boy Howdy was all exuberance opening presents and exclaiming that he had gotten just what he had always wanted. After a scrumptious, not at all healthy, Christmas breakfast and a touch of tidying up we moved into Christmas dinner making mode. I hosted my brother Jared and sister Megan's families for the holiday. The dinner was wonderful, made even better by two kind and awesome siblings and their spouses pitching in and not being cranky for the minor missteps along the way. The food was yummers, dessert awesome, and after it was done the kids entertained each other while the adults got the rare privilege of playing a game while children are awake (at least it's a rare privilege for Matthew and me). What a completely lovely day. I have no complaints and was utterly sad when the day was over, not to be relived until next year.

I should note that we don't do Santa at our house. Not that the kids don't know who he is and what he does but we've never brought him up in relation to what they are getting for Christmas. So when we were at Costco having lunch a few days before Christmas and a man sitting next to us kindly asked what Boy Howdy wanted Santa to bring him, I love that Boy Howdy responded, "I already have 4 presents,"(fingers up to gesture just how many 4 was)  as if to say, why do I need Santa?

He got more than 4 presents.

Merry Christmas

Wednesday, December 23, 2015

December Shenanigans

Nothing other than Christmas is super blog worthy of it's own so here are a few pictures from the month to show what silly children we have.

First off, the Saturday before Christmas Matthew decided he wanted to institute the Christmas tradition of making and decorating cookies. The children were so excited to do it and Matthew even indulged me by letting me make chocolate sugar cookies. Everyone got their own color in a baggie to frost. I felt pretty proud of myself for thinking of this because I'm sure it would have ended with a lot more mess and way more frustrated parents had this thought not occurred to me. Boy Howdy was so excited at the end to be able to eat some of his leftover icing.


Matthew got a haircut earlier that day before the cookies began and while I was distracted, Cheeks took the opportunity to rifle through my makeup smearing herself with my waterproof mascara. I sure love my 2-year old. Boy Howdy made similar mischief. I will not be disappointed when the ruin mommy's makeup phase ends.
 
 
 Boy Howdy thought my Christmas stockings made the perfect boots but refused to stand still so I could get a picture of him before I took them away.

Matthew took off the week before Christmas and we had lots of fun as a family going to OMSI and exploring the Children's Museum.