christmas!

Christmas this year was warm and sugary, just the way it should be. On the way home from dinner and presents with James' mom and family, Jillian called Santa (thank you super cool app) to see where he was and what he was doing (he was eating dinner at the North Pole, in case you were wondering). We also had a successful drone Rudolph sighting on the interstate, which added some extra motivation to hurry home and get to bed!

Hats off to the girls for sleeping in until 8:30am Christmas morning, especially since we adults, Santa's elves as it were, always stay up late on Christmas Eve with present assembling, wrapping, stocking stuffing and Christmas breakfast meal prep. I also kept getting distracted by the vast amounts of snowfall happening outside...we got like 6 inches!

When Jillian woke up, she instantly started ooo-ing and aah-ing over the filled stockings in her room. It's so fun to lay in bed and listen to how excited they get over the littlest things- "Wow Olivia, look! Santa finally brought me Frozen bandaids!" Geez, Santa. Finally.

 ^That bedhead doesn't mess around!

I love a relaxed Christmas! We stayed in jammies all day long, watched movies, ate too much candy, and the girls played nonstop with their new loot.

 

 James' Dad and brothers joined us for Christmas brunch- probably my favorite meal of the whole year (yes, even better than Thanksgiving). 

 ^Play-Doh has magical kid entertaining powers. Jillian will play with that stuff for hours! I should just know by now to have a constant supply on hand...

^ Like I said, we like to keep it pretty chill! 

Later that night, we had to pack our bags to head to Florida the next day. It felt wrong to pack swim suits and shorts when there were heaping piles of snow outside, but that made me even more excited to go! More on that later. :-)