A Holly Jolly Christmas

This year we hosted the whole Sanders’ family for Christmas!

Christmas Eve day was spent hanging out with the family, 

We put the last pieces on our Advent calendar, 

Then off to Christmas Eve Mass:

Which, anytime we go to church, involves some baby wrangling

and in this day’s case, baby joisting 

 After church, Sydney wrestled with her tights for awhile

And cuddled up to read Twas the Night Before Christmas, 

Once the girls were in bed, Santa and his elves got busy with presents, 

Christmas morning, Colbie came down, saw all of the gifts and exclaimed, “WHAT A MESS!”.  That’s our girl.  

There was a note left for Colbie and Syd from Sophie the elf saying she would see them again next year.

 While we waited for coffee to brew and cinnamon rolls to bake, Colbie headed to her stocking,

 and couldn’t have been more thrilled!

Is there anyone who didn’t get fuzzy socks in their stocking?

Next up, it was time to open presents!!!!!  

and pretend to talk on Mama’s phone

Uncle Jason scored a head from Santa...creepy.  Lucky for Jason, there was a sweet new bow tie around that mannequin’s neck.

Syd scored some sweet blocks

and Mama scored a “kid free weekend away in Chicago!”

In addition to some other great stuff, the hubs and I both scored some serious cleaning up to do too.

After playing with toys, much of the household headed to naps to rest up for the evening to come.  We were blessed to have our Madison family, the Clark-Skeens’ family join us for Christmas dinner and celebration...and dancing of course

As luck would have it, both Colbie and her BFF, Keira, scored chapstick/lip gloss from Santa, and that pretty much occupied these two for the entire night.

By the end of the evening there was a glare coming off of both of the girl’s lips.  

This past year has been filled with so many blessing, and I couldn’t be more thankful for the blessing of this family in my life.

 Merry (late) Christmas, Love the Sanders'