Santa Was Here!

Every other year, Noah's cousins (and my older brother and wife) spend Christmas with us in New Jersey.  We all head over to my parents' house for a fun (and loud) time.  It's become a tradition that we spend Christmas Eve with my parents and Christmas Day with Chris' parents.  This year, that really worked out well, since Christmas fell on a Sunday and my brother and his family would be spending the morning at church.  So we jam-packed Christmas Eve with all of our favorite Christmas Eve and Day activities.   Decorating cookies for Santa, acting out the nativity (I shared all about it here), singing Christmas songs, and opening SO MANY gifts! The kids all wore matching Santa shirts, Grandma was perpetually worried that someone would get hurt, and I followed everyone around with my camera.  While there's something to be said about last year's quieter Christmas Eve, the hustle and bustle of 4 kids under 10 is really what Christmas is all about.  Kids really do make everything better and more magical!

 looking at the annual Shutterfly calendar that I make for my parents

 it definitely came in handy that both Noah and Aidan got Batman Hideouts!

 playing Guess Who really brought me back to my childhood!

We left my parent's house around 9pm and I was really shocked that Noah didn't fall asleep on the car ride home, even if it is only 10 minutes.  Not only was he awake, but he wanted to play when we got home.  I let him play for as long as it took me to get ready for bed, because let's be honest, Santa was tired and still had lots of work to do.  Chris brought all the gifts up from the basement while I got Noah to sleep.  I then got everything organized under the big tree and the stocking stuffers under Noah's personal tree in his room.  I've mentioned before that Santa leaves his stocking in his room just as my parents did for us when I was a kid. And I will take full ownership that we went overboard. And not only did Chris and I get Noah a lot, but in addition to the many gifts my mom gave Noah earlier in the evening, she also sent a bunch more for Noah to open Christmas morning.  This boy really is loved!

Thankfully Noah didn't wake up to find us playing Santa and slept all night.  I usually end up co-sleeping with him in his bed, and every day this month, he would ask me three questions when he woke up.  "Is it morning? Is daddy home? Is it Christmas?".  I was really expecting that to be his first question when he woke up Christmas morning.  But instead, he just woke up and asked if he could watch his iPad.  He didn't even notice the stocking and gifts under his tree in the corner of his room, and since I was happy to wake up a little slowly, I gladly handed over the iPad.  Chris and I eventually decided it was time to tell him it was Christmas and Noah then excitedly jumped off the bed to see what was in his stocking!

I was able to brush my teeth and put some makeup on while Noah and daddy did some activity books that were left in his stocking.  Then it was time to head downstairs and see what else Santa brought.  Noah was so excited!  Noah had asked for 4 things from Santa.  When he peered over the balcony, he said "I only asked for 4 things, that's a lot more than 4!".  I asked if we should return the rest since he was happy with just the 4 gifts from Santa, but he quickly declined that option and was thrilled to open all his gifts ;)

Chris picked me up a gift card to my favorite store, Loft, for Noah to give me.  Noah really had no idea about it but he was so cute with helping me open it.  But my favorite photo is when I tried to get a hug and a kiss from him afterwards.  He's definitely not my baby anymore!

Chris is a Mets fan and I was surprised that we didn't have a Mets ornament on the tree.  So I decided to surprise him with one.  And while Noah really has no interest in baseball yet, he has grown attached to the Red Sox team, to the dismay of his extended family Yankee fans.  Chris is a really good sport and thinks it's funny that Noah is so adamant about his "favorite team", so I made sure to get Noah his own Red Sox ornament that we can put up each year next to Chris' Mets ornament.  Who knows what will happen in years to come, but it will always be funny to look back and remember that Noah was a huge Red Sox fan when he was 4 :)

After all the gifts were open, Noah was very eager to start playing with EVERYTHING!  After we fought with the boxes to get every last piece free, it was finally time for him and Chris to play with all the new toys.  I took the opportunity to go shower and get ready for Christmas at my in-laws' house.  I was impressed with how well Noah took it that he had to leave all the new toys he just got.  He even smiled for the family photo I requested.  I told him that my Christmas wish this year was for him to smile in a few family photos, and he happily obliged... Merry Christmas to me!!!

How was your Christmas this year?

The Christmas Nativity Play

I grew up where each Christmas we would put on the Christmas Nativity Play.  While our church would often put on a play with children as the "actors", I also remember doing it at home as a family activity.  Sometimes it was just the 5 of us while some years we would invite neighbors and family friends over to participate with us.  And even though Christmas has become very commercial over the years, this remains one of my favorite family traditions.  As we got older, we stopped acting it out and instead just read the story from the Bible.  But now that my older brother and I both have kids, we have started to carry on the tradition with the next generation.  This was our third year acting out the Nativity play with Noah's cousins, and was probably our best so far.  

Noah's cousins drove down to New Jersey on Christmas Eve morning.  As soon as they got to my parents' house, we started getting ready for our Nativity Play.  Growing up, our costumes were very homemade.  I remember I always wanted to be an angel and would end up wearing one of my dad's undershirts with some silver garland on my head.  And the shepherds would wear bathrobes and have towels secured to their heads with a neck tie.  We would even get some Burger King paper crowns and cover them with tinfoil for the 3 kings/wise men.  A few years ago my mom organized and directed the play at their church, and she ended up buying a ton of costumes that we now have at our disposal. (My mom bought these costumes from here, but my sister-in-law got some for their church from Oriental Trading).  Noah has one girl cousin, and she's happy to be Mary every year.  While one of Noah's boy cousins had no interest in participating this year (he wasn't feeling very well), Noah and his other cousin, Matthew, were very into it.  While my mom had purchased some shepherd "dresses", we then took a king size pillowcase and neck tie to make the headdress.  We learned the king size pillowcase was a much better size compared to the towels we used to use.  She picked up some staffs at Party City, and while we were a little concerned the boys would use them as weapons, we were pleasantly surprised that they behaved and no one got hurt.  

Back in 1984, this script was published in a church magazine.  Over the years, my parents have adapted the original script and we now use this script for our Nativity Play.  My mom's experience is that kids often mumble the lines or don't speak loudly enough.  So instead, she wrote the play so that a Narrator is the only person who speaks while the children act it out.  And my favorite part is that in between all the speaking parts, we sing Christmas songs to help tell the story.  My dad plays the guitar and leads the singing.  Here are the lyrics to the songs we sing.  If you don't have someone musical in your family, you could easily sing without background music or even download the songs to sing along with.  

I love how this family tradition brings back so many childhood memories.  To this day we use the  crib that I used for my baby dolls as a child.  This year, we borrowed Noah's Cabbage Patch doll to be Baby Jesus, but we still wrapped him up in my baby blanket.   

And since we only had three kids this year, everyone got to have multiple roles.  Mary and the shepherds did a quick change mid play and were then the 3 Kings (we got the crowns from here).  I wrapped up some empty boxes for the wise men to give to Baby Jesus.  The funniest part was when the kids were goofing around moving the boxes all over the place... they each wanted the gold wrapped one ;)

And once we were done with the Nativity Play, we sang some more of the upbeat Santa songs.  We handed out bells, Santa hats, and reindeer ears and the kids put on a little show for us.  It was hilarious to watch the kids dance around.  Noah was very serious with his bell ringing and was tapping his foot to the beat.  

Christmas is a big deal in my family.  And while we definitely go all out with the toys and the gifts, it's nice that we also make sure to include the story of Jesus' birth into our celebration.  I love that it's an easy and fun way to really get the kids involved and remind them of the real reason we celebrate.  

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Snow Day and a Visit From Santa!

We had our first real snow on Saturday.  Nothing too crazy, especially compared to what we got last winter.  But there were a few inches on the ground, and with the freezing rain, a birthday party we were supposed to go to was rescheduled.  Instead, we all bundled up in our winter gear and got outside.  When we headed out, we weren't aware that it was already raining.  While it didn't bother Noah at all, I was constantly putting my camera into my jacket for safe keeping in between photos and throwing my hood on top of my winter hat to stay dry best I could.   Noah on the other hand couldn't care less and jumped right in.  He was very eager to help Chris, everything from shoveling to cleaning off the car.  We had to remind him multiple times not to use the scraper on the actual car.  And while his shoveling was cute, where he emptied his shovel wasn't really helping the greater cause.  But Noah had fun and thankfully there really wasn't much to clear and Chris was able to get it done pretty quickly.  

After making a few snowballs and realizing the snow was perfect for packing, I decided to try my hand at a snowman.  Last year I felt like the snow was never ideal and we never even attempted it.  I have to admit that this is probably the first snowman I've made as an adult.  But I guess my Canadian roots came through because I think I did a decent job.  Since we didn't have a crazy amount of snow, my snowman was a little dirty and had random leaves sticking out of it, but Noah didn't seem to mind.  While we rolled our three snow balls, Chris searched for one of the snowman kits Noah got last Christmas (both my mom and me and Chris gave him one!).  While I love the idea of the kit, I think we will go back to finding old school accessories from around the house the next time we make one.  The plastic parts kept falling out and they looked a little on the cheap side.  But it was cool that they had a few options for the lips and the eyes so you could make your snowman a girl or a boy.  Despite the accessories, I'm actually really proud of this snowman... probably more than I should be!

my coat | Noah's hat, jacket, snow pants, boots

Here's the thing... one of the reasons we were so eager to get outside was because Santa was supposed to be stopping by our house in a firetruck.  Our town has a volunteer fire station and each year they do a fundraiser where you can bring a wrapped gift down to the station with a $50 donation per family.  Then Santa comes by on a fire truck and delivers the gift to your child.  We did it last year and loved it.  We were assigned the morning shift, and since we were supposed to have the birthday party, I requested that we be first on the drop off list.  With the weather, they bumped the time up to 8:30 am, so we were out bright and early waiting for them to come.  By 10:15, Santa still hadn't arrived and we were getting cold and losing steam.  So we opted to come inside and warm up with some hot chocolate (for me and Chris) and blankets.  While Noah is a fan of chocolate milk, he doesn't like hot food or beverages.  Instead, he stuck with the blankets but made sure to eat lots of the marshmallow toppings ;)  

Chris kept his eye on the window the entire time, because he wanted to make sure we were outside to see the firetruck drive up to our house.  Thankfully, they have an SUV that gets to your house first to kind of give you a warning.  We quickly grabbed some dry coats, hats, and boots, and ran out the door.  Noah remembers Santa coming last year, so he was very excited!  Here are some screenshots from the video that Chris took as Santa pulled up.  Noah made sure to stay very close to me, but was very excited that Santa had brought him a gift.  We then made sure to get a family photo in front of the fire truck before Santa drove to our neighbor's house for another delivery.  I really love that our town does this every year.  What a great way to raise money for the fire department and make so many little kids happy!

my hat 

Curious what Santa brought him?  While the Imaginext Batman helicopter is on his list, this Santa brought him a Green Lantern toy. I was a little nervous that Noah would be disappointed when he guessed that fire truck Santa was going to bring his biggest (in size) toy, the Stellosphere, but thankfully he was thrilled!  It's making him even more excited to get the Batman helicopter!  

And if you're interested, here's last year's visit from fire truck Santa!

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