Christmas 2012

Christmas Eve I took Brandon and a friend bowling in the morning,

which was a pretty relaxing idea because no one was there and it killed time before Mass.

After Church we had dinner at my parents and then Brandon rushed us home.

He put out his magic reindeer food that he had made at school.

(oatmeal and glitter)

Below he is sprinkling it on the lawn so the reindeer will see it. 

We always read "the night before Christmas" 

but Lily was super tired so i had to read it separately to the kids 

Brandon made his note and put out the cookies and carrot

 Santa came! 

we realized it looks very lopsided on gifts, with who got more.

 but we figured since Santa brought a "house" for Lily she would be ok with it. 

Christmas Morning Brandon woke up at 3:30AM. we told him he was going back to bed.

Lily woke up at 6:15am. I gave her a bottle and put her back down thinking Brandon would be up soon.

 at 6:45 we ended up going into his room because we have a strict sched of people to see, and i needed to make breakfast etc :)

First we opened presents. about 10 minutes in Brandon remembered he had picked out gifts at school for us. He has been DYING to give them to us, so he stopped his gifts and went in his room and handed out our presents first. it was very heartwarming and exactly what I wanted him to learn from it.

 It is always better to give then receive. :)

He unfortunately lost mine, i'm thinking it was left at school. he didn't get too upset but he apologized several times and you could tell he was feeling bad. 

Back to opening his gift, he unwrapped each one VERY carefully and was very methodical about it.

He asked Santa for walkie Talkies. Below is him opening them. 

 Mocha in the morning light

 He also loved his Mario Kart tracks which were a surprise

 After he was done he helped open Lily's presents

Lily watched him open the presents and then played in the paper and played with some of hers. 

We had a big breakfast and did the normal visitations.

GrandMom/GrandRuss

MomMom/Harrison Family

Nan and Pop

Granny

Dinner with the Chisholms

Our car was so stuffed this year (we didnt drop any off during the day) we could hardly move on the ride home and almost couldn't see out the windows. 

Kenns instructions to Brandon with a big stack in the back seat

 "make sure this monster truck doesn't fall on your sister on the way home"

We were very spoiled like always from our amazing family~