Ho Ho Ho

We just had an amazing Christmas break at our house!  I'm sad it's over in many ways, but it's good for the kids to get back into a routine.  They were very happy to go back to school.  Aidan asked me to go just about every day over break, and he wouldn't even take a break from school work.  He sat at our kitchen table and did "work" for at least 2 hours per day over break, even on Christmas day!  The crazy child!!  As annoyed as I was about this on Christmas, it's good for him to stay in the habit of working so I let him do it as much as he wanted.

We started our break with the boys' Christmas party at school.  Aidan managed to snag my camera and took a few photos of his own at the party - he got his teacher, Mrs. Thompson, and his two aides, Mr. Jeremy and Ms. Stephanie.  I love school parties!!  This particular party was very calm with some food and crafts.

We celebrate Christmas Eve at our house with a couple of fun activities for the kids.  We always try to decorate our gingerbread house, and it was really fun this year.  Scotte was working late so I had to do it myself this time.  If you've ever seen a snowman or gingerbread house constructed by my husband, the engineer, then you will know that they are fairly perfect.  I am not an engineer, plus I was trying my hardest to keep Liam from eating all the candy.  Soooo, this house was constructed by the children, alone, and they did a marvelous job but it is nowhere near perfect. :)  Liam ate so much candy, though, and did very little decorating.

When we visited Nana and Papa at Thanksgiving, we took the boys to visit Santa and they made some reindeer food for us to give to the reindeer on Christmas Eve.  Well, my friend, Bethany, gave us the idea of constructing a runway for the reindeer out of paper chains and sprinkling the food there.  The boys really got into that idea so we ran with it.  I don't think they have much of a concept of how big a sleigh and all the reindeer would be, because our runway was fairly pathetic, but I guess that wasn't the point.  They enjoyed doing this, though, so I think it will become part of our tradition.

Of course, after bath and stories we have to leave out cookies and milk for Santa.  Yum!!

Last year Scotte and I stayed up half the night on Christmas Eve to set up the kids' fish tank.  I was relieved to get to bed at a normal hour this year!  I wasn't counting on Brendan waking up at 3:30 in the morning, though!  The little guy was so excited to open presents.  I let him climb into bed with us at that point because I could tell he was not going to go back to sleep.  He bugged approximately every 10 minutes to find out how much longer he had to wait to go downstairs.  Finally, at 6am, I let him wake up his brothers.  Then, madness ensued!!

I think their favorite present was the Cars 2 Geo Trax set.  We haven't stopped playing with it yet!  It took Liam the ENTIRE day to open all of his presents.  He was perfectly content with whatever his brothers were opening and he truly would have been happy with one new toy.  I love 2 year olds!!

Well, I still haven't taken down our Christmas decorations or put away the new toys.  This weekend is the time!!  I guess I don't want the fun to end yet.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, everyone!!