scenes from christmas morning.

christmas 2013

^^^little heads poking around the corner to catch a glimpse of what santa left behind.^^^

^^^"candy, mom." all jonah really cares about.^^^

^^^and let the present opening begin!^^^

^^^love that excited face.^^^

^^^eden was really excited about her lego house.^^^

^^^in train heaven.^^^

^^^an impromptu puppet show.^^^

^^^taking his new scooter for a ride.^^^

^^^looking pretty fly on the new bike with one hand on and one hand off.^^^

first off, this is really sad that i am blogging about christmas morning when it's valentines day.  i keep trying to catch up but life keeps getting in the way.  so, of course christmas was great and magical and happy and everything it should it be.  lots of joyful kids.  and this christmas was even better than past years because we mostly stayed home all day together.  although, we did sneak away for a few hours to go see frozen (for a second time).  my kids adore that movie and i think my husband does too.  but then we headed back home for a quiet afternoon where the kids explored all their newly acquired stuff.  we usually are racing from one family's house to the next all day long but this year we decided to stay put and like i said, it was wonderful.

well i hope everyone out there is having a happy valentines day and spreading some love! we can always use some more love in this crazy world of ours.  xoxoxo

a christmas get-together.

we got together with jason's family on the sunday evening before christmas.  those cousins always have a good time when they're with each other.  they decorated some cookies for santa and by the time the decorating was done there was enough sugar and sprinkles on those cookies to put even santa into a sugar coma.  but the creativity was definitely present.  the cousins also acted out the nativity.  ava and eden were the sweetest angels, jack was joseph, and, well, jonah was a shepherd who kept sneaking away to the bowl of peanut m&m's up on the counter.  that's my boy.  we ended the night with a little gift exchange.  jonah received a remote control lightening mcqueen car that sort of made his day.  we had a great time visiting with family and eating lots of delicious mexican food and reflecting on the true meaning of christmas.  love the holiday season.

church breakfast with santa and mrs. claus.

the best kind of church parties are the kind where you can roll out of bed and show up in your jammies. our ward christmas party this year was a breakfast with santa and the mrs. and i hope they continuous this idea for the years to come because with all the craziness the holidays bring having something low key like this is just what you need.  plus the kids love it.  this also happened to be the first of many encounters with santa claus for my kids this holiday season.  it seemed as if we kept running into the man dressed in red over and over again as you will see in my posts to come.

a kid friendly valentine's dinner.

menu:

strawberry lemonade

homemade heart shaped pepperoni pizzas

salad doused in ranch

watermelon

and dessert...(because no meal is complete without it)

chocolate covered strawberries

red velvet cake {not pictured}

yum.yum. yum.