Christmas 2014

For the whole week of Christmas, all four of us were home.  Matt had taken vacation time for the week, and I so loved having all of us together.  We celebrate Christmas in two waves: Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.  Sometimes it's divided up into two posts, but this year it was fine to all be in one.  I actually didn't take a ton of pictures this year - I really just wanted to be "in the moment" instead of worrying about being behind a camera.  And I don't regret that!  We had an amazing two days!

Our Christmas tree on Christmas Eve - before any opening began.

I am so in love with these two children.  They are amazing.  Gigi and Poppy came over to do Christmas with us on Christmas Eve, so we got some pictures before any opening began.

Once Gigi and Poppy got here - it was time for Christmas Round 1!

Gigi took this of Cooper while we were opening gifts - who doesn't love sweet baby feet??

Family picture before bed!

Hot chocolate, cookies, and The Grinch before bed.

After eating our own cookies, we made a plate for Santa.  We made snickerdoodle cookies for Santa (from Scratch!  Just call me Martha!) - and we all loved them.  So I knew Santa probably would, too.  ;)

We left Santa some cookies, and we left the reindeer some carrots.

LL did a great job of setting out the milk and the cookies/carrots.

Cooper just wanted to eat it - haha. We had to explain that they were for Santa!

After that, we went outside to sprinkle the reindeer food.  LL made this at school and was excited to bring it home and do it!

The last thing we had to do before bed was hang the Santa Key on the door.  Since we don't have a fireplace, we have a special Santa Key that we hang outside that only Santa can use to come and see us.

I think Christmas Eve night is my favorite.  Just the anticipation of Santa and a fun day ahead is almost tangible.  I love it. 

Santa came!  Cooper's Santa gifts:

LL's Santa gifts:

We literally spent like 3 hours opening gifts Christmas morning.  We opened for a while, then we took a break for me to make breakfast.   We opened some more, and then took a break because Oma and Opa came and we needed to eat breakfast.  Then we opened some more.  It was so fantastic!  We had so much time to open gifts, take out the toys, and let the kids play with them as we opened.  This was, by far, my favorite Christmas ever.  

The kids were playing with a new car track that Cooper got from Aunt Laura and Uncle Gino when this happened.  Matt took a picture of the car tangled in LL's hair with the warning to "keep hair away from track" - haha.  And yes - I did end up having to cut it out!

We stayed at home through nap time and then went to Grammy and Pop's for another round of Christmas.

I am so blessed with this family!

This handsome man turned 2.5 on Christmas day!

Cooper had a blast playing with Uncle Bryan.

3 generations of Mullican men

We all had the best Christmas.  I'm convinced that seeing Christmas through the eyes of children is even better than being a kid again.

You can see our past Christmases here:
2013
2012
2010
2009