Christmas...finally

So you would think that with a newborn and two crazy boys running around I I just flat don't have time to blog. Truth be told, I have the time, it just isn't high on my priority list. So, I may be 2 weeks late, but here it goes.

We had a wonderful Christmas!! The holiday weekend got off to a rough start when I got mastitis. If you nursing moms have never had it let me just tell it that it. is. awful. Luckily by Christmas Eve I was feeling much better and we were able to head to Garrett's folks' for lunch and round one of present opening.

The boys really got into the whole present-opening thing and loved every minute of it. Of course they wanted us to take each toy out of its' packaging before moving onto the next gift. Once we established that that wasn't going to happen, things went really well.

Here is our pile of presents from Garrett's family. Clearly it is way too much! :) Notice Kate right in the middle behind all of the gifts. Her big brothers helped her open all of her presents.


We had a hard time getting the boys to sit still for a photo op, they were just a little excited.


Playing with all of their toys.


We came home, got ready for bed and put out milk and cookies for Santa. We told the boys that Santa wouldn't come unless they were asleep, so off to bed they went after reading The Night Before Christmas.

Our stockings were hung by the chimney with care.


Here is a close up of the stocking I made for Kate. I made a 'boy' version for Blake and Jack's 1st Christmas as well.


As a kid, my brother and I sat at the top of the stairs on Christmas morning and had to wait for my parents to take our picture and tell us that we could come downstairs. Since Santa doesn't wrap his presents, my parents didn't want us coming down without them able to see our faces. We loved this so much that the last Christmas with my mom, Garrett and I drove over in our jammies and went upstairs with my brother waiting at the top of the stairs for us. That being said, I was so excited when we moved into our 2 story house so we could have the same tradition with our kiddos.
This is the best attempt of all 3 kiddos at the top of the stairs. No worries, I was right there to insure the safety of Kate.


Santa came and he delivered! The boys both got a bike and Kate got a walker. I realize that Santa over shot her gift by about 9 months but I think he realized that her birthday isn't for a full year so she needed some bigger girl gifts. Santa also stuffed their stockings to much that they were exploding on the floor.


The large tape measure was a huge hit.


They LOVED their bikes and were so excited to ride them.


Apparently we did a horrible job of getting pictures of the kids actually opening presents. So just imagine lots of excited faces to see cars, trucks, airplanes and helicopters. Here is Jack trying on his Superman dress-up outfit. Now they have 'manly' things to dress up in instead of our neighbor's princess dresses, fairy wings and plastic heels. :)


After we opened presents and got dressed we headed to my dad's house for Christmas round 3. The boys were not too happy to leave all of their new toys so we told them they could each pick 2 to bring with them. Sneaky Blake filled his garbage truck up with a ton of Matchbox cars. I was actually quite impressed with his trickery.


By now the boys were old pros at opening gifts.


My brother gave the boys these huge dinosaurs wrapped in garbage bags. This cracked me up yet didn't surprise me. In his defense, I'm not really sure how else he would have wrapped them. The boys loved the dinosaurs.


Oh and Kate was there too. Once again, her brothers helped her open her presents.


Jack loves his hats.


I am so sad that I didn't get a picture of all three kids in their Christmas outfits. But, here is our pretty girl all dressed up.


After Christmas we had a couple more gifts to exchange with our old neighbors. The boys were so excited to see Mason and Lauren again. Here are the 4 kids with a card that Mason and Lauren made for us.


They have this present-opening thing down.


Lauren wanted to hold Kate and she did such a great job.


She loved it until this happened...

She put Kate down pretty quickly. Oops.

All in all we had a great Christmas with our families and with our newest family member. It was so wonderful to have Kate with us and know that we were able to celebrate our first Christmas as a completed family.