Christmastime 2017

🎄Happy Thursday after Christmas! Our Christmas was awesome this year and everyone being together made it that much better!  Jaxson, now 3, is at the  perfect age to enjoy the magic of this time of year!

Christmastime for me has got to be my favorite time of year! The decorations just make the house so warm & Cody and so many of my decorations remind me of the Christmases as a kid. I strive like crazy to make great memories and start lasting traditions with my family!  Unfortunately this year my daughter Kaylee and her son Jaxson Came down with the flu Christmas Eve. As luck always has it there worst day was Christmas Day! Somehow three-year-olds tend to bounce back superfast so he was still able to enjoy his day between the motrin and coughing, his mother on the other hand was down and out!

Things for us are so different than they have been in the past. Having young kids perpetually for so long we have gotten up at the crack of dawn every single Christmas morning for the coming on 30 years now. This year it was 8 o’clock and we had to wake our gang up as Jaxson was dancing around ready to open his gifts but even he didn’t get up until eight.   It was so nice to take our time going downstairs, turning All the Christmas lights on, grabbing coffee and sitting by the tree with all the presents and the stockings hung. There’s a special peacefulness Christmas morning offers unlike any other morning of the year!

People always freak out when they see the amount of presents that are under our tree, but you have to remember it’s everyone’s presents. Six kids, two parents, one  grandson, three boyfriends and presents to each other as well. We always take hours to open them because we open one at a time so everyone can see what the other person gets. It just gives everyone time to reflect on the time together instead of ripping through the presents. We have done it this way since the kids were very young, therefore everyone is used to doing it this way.

We let Mitchell and Jaxson open a couple gifts while waiting for the others to arrive. We grabbed our breakfast and coffee and headed into the family room for gift opening...

As always the day flew by and before we knew it we said goodbye to Christmas 2017! I am still enjoying the Christmas decorations at our house and will till the week after New years! Then they slowly all come down but lets not talk about that now.

How was your Christmas?