Christmas

The older we get, the more complicated Christmas seems to get. It's hard to combine the traditions from our two families that we were raised in, with the traditions that each family wants to add individually, and figure out the way we want to do things for ourselves. With that being said, even though it gets harder, Christmas gets better with each new child, and with each of them getting older.

 We had a heck of a time figuring out what Meili wanted from Santa this year. She said she wanted a unicorn-which we just got for her birthday from Build-a-Bear workshop. But she said that she wanted one that was soft, but that she could ride on, and was as big as her. I tried to tell her that Santa couldn't bring her a real unicorn, and she insisted that that's not what she meant, but it sure sounded like it to me. Finally, the day that she was going to sit on Santa's lap, she told him that she wanted new clothes for the unicorn she already has. Sweet!

Grant had no choice. Meili told Santa he wanted a Paw Patrol blanket. I'm pretty sure that he would have said he wanted a truck though. Luckily, dad already had that covered.

 About a week before, my mom saw this with Meili when they were shopping, and decided she needed to have it. But she couldn't give it to Meili with all the other grandkids at her house, so we worked it into our Christmas morning plans. The only problem is when Meili decides that "Star" needs to come places with us in the car, or sleep in bed with her.

 Yes, Grant got his truck!

Josh tried to get me to scale back this year, and he I think he was mostly successful. Next year, I'll have to remind myself that he's right. The kids don't care, and they love Christmas regardless of how many presents they get.


...And... these are out of order, but I just realized that I didn't include Christmas Eve. Josh and I thought for a long time about what we wanted to do for Christmas Eve. We've always been with one of our families, and with plans this year, that didn't seem that it was going to work out. So Josh mentioned sledding, and I thought it sounded fun to try something different as far as food, so I did a crockpot chicken. It turned out that my parents ended up coming to Cache Valley that night, so we spent the night with Nick's family, my parents, and our family. It wasn't necessarily what I originally envisioned, but it was really fun.

 Grant, for whatever reason, decided to wake up super early that morning, and we all paid for it the rest of the day. Here he is at 10:00, already nearly dead asleep.

 When we finally did go sledding, Meili loved it, and could have stayed all day. Grant wasn't so sure about it, and the fact that he was so tired, just added to that. He pretty much just cried all day long until he had a nice long nap.

I am totally willing to make sledding our Christmas Eve tradition though. (Provided that we actually have snow-which is not always the case.)