Here's a little recap of what I can remember from Christmas. Even though the fancy internet let me backdate my post, I am actually writing about Christmas in Mid June. You know, like summer. yeah. summer.
Anyway, we couldn't skip magical Christmas Tree Lane in Alameda. It was much different and required more planning living in El Sobrante. Before, we could just put on our jackets and walk a few blocks. It was totally worth the drive to visit again.
Easton knows the best place to enjoy a Christmas cookie is wrapped up in Daddy's sweater in the baby carrier.
Gabriela brought Santa a note. She was not convinced that this was the "real" Santa and decided, all on her own, that Santa must have some helpers since he is extra super busy just a few days before Christmas.
We got a giant 9 or 10 foot tree since we have high vaulted ceilings. It only took about 3,000 lights to light up this bad boy. Lane gets all the credit for spending an entire evening meticulously wrapping the lights in and out of each tree branch to get this magical look.
Here is Gabriela with her note for Santa.
Just a few days before Christmas, she lost her first tooth ever. She was so excited! Thank goodness we finished our tooth fairy bag in time!
We enjoyed many cozy Christmas time fires in our fireplace.
The kids enjoying some Christmas goodies while Daddy read them The Polar Express. This book has an extra special place in my heart since Gabriela could recite this entire book to us, word for word, when she was only two years old. And we totally figured it out by chance one night that she could do it.
Some of our paper snowflakes. We were originally supposed to do one special Christmas activity every day leading up to Christmas. Unfortunately, we got super sick, all of us. Fevers, achiness, coughs. It was really bad. We laid in bed and napped for a week. Thank goodness the kids were sick too, so we could all rest. But this didn't stop Gabriela from reminding me constantly that we were missing our Christmas activities.
Here are Santa's cookies next to his reindeer food. Gabriela's friend, Lucy, invited us over to make reindeer food out of carob chips, flax seed, oats, dried cranberries, and of course, lots and lots of glitter!
We finally were able to make Christmas cookies after recovering from our two week long miserable colds. It felt so good to get back in the Christmas spirit!
Sometimes I get labeled as the overachiever in the family, but please take a look at Lane's snowman cookie. He carefully selected the right colored sprinkles to craft that masterpiece of a snowman's face.
We attempted to get some family shots of us in front of the Christmas tree. It wasn't too successful.
And, don't tell Santa, but after lots of requests to hug Jovie, our Christmas elf, we told the kids they could hug her on her last night before she returned to the North Pole.
And then it was Christmas morning! I don't know how Santa managed to fill those stockings so full!
To say that Easton enjoyed his monster candy cane is a huge understatement.
We couldn't believe that Santa would give so much candy to a little two year old, and didn't complain when Easton kept dropping his candy cane, causing it to break into little pieces and end up in the garbage.
Gabriela was happy to receive her Clementine books!
And here she is, opening those pixie dolls, that she requested from Santa. He totally came through for her!
Lane really wanted to build Gabriela a fairy house for Christmas. He spent a lot of time looking up ideas and then settled on buying a kit so they could make the fairy house together. They spent the next two days working on that fairy house together all day long.
Easton enjoyed some Christmas cookies for breakfast. yum yum.
