Holidays 2018

A quick overview of our 2018 holiday season... which frankly was a bit of blur, after having just moved! We moved into our house the week before Thanksgiving, so we were definitely in no shape to host. Luckily, Carrie and Chip wanted to host (since it was their first holiday since getting married!), and now it's an easy drive for us to get to their house - not even two hours away! This made for a really easy day trip there on Thanksgiving.

We had a lovely holiday with my parents, aunt, and Carrie & Chip. Henry was particularly delighted to spend some time in Chip's music room. Chip really enjoyed that too, and the kids and he had a great time jamming out. Henry and Natalie made up a song, and once Chip heard Henry playing "Feel it Still", they all played and sang together!

For Christmas, we wanted to host since it would be our first Christmas in our new house. Luckily, everyone agreed, so we had a full house - my parents, Evan's parents, my aunt, and on Christmas Eve Carrie and Chip. So nice to celebrate with so many!

We had to figure out how to put up the Christmas lights at the new house - turns out we don't have nearly enough, and will have to get more next year! But I think Evan and Natalie did a nice job.

We had the house all decorated inside as well - and while we've needed a new tree for a couple of years, our vaulted ceiling living room really reinforced that. Time to get a taller tree! Also, next year this will all look a bit cozier now that we have things on the walls.

The kids woke up Christmas morning to their new body pillows and stockings ready to be opened on the couch! I loved that for one more year, their matching pjs from Scott & Amanda still fit.

I think everyone really liked their presents - I loved my "big" gift from Evan. Friends Funko Pop set #2! Specialty characters. I think I'm going to need the original set now as well. But I do love these hanging out on the shelf behind me as I work!

Oh, and just after Christmas I finished my latest cross stitch project - Angels of Rockefeller Center. I have an idea for seasonal cross stitches in our foyer, so this one will be framed and ready to go for Christmas next year.

Christmas 2017

This was, by far, the craziest Christmas we've ever had! We hosted Evan's whole family, as well as some of our extended Australian family. That's right - the 4 of us, plus both of Evan's brothers, their families, Evan's parents, and my sister-in-law Claire's parents, brother, and girlfriend from Australia! Quite the crew...and man did we have fun.

Evan's brothers, my sisters-in-law, and their kids all stayed in the house with us. Evan's parents were at a hotel, and Claire's family were actually in DC, as they spent a few days there doing the tourist thing. Everyone got to us by Christmas Eve, where we had a lovely dinner cooked by Claire's family as a thank you for hosting us all. We then prepped for Christmas Eve like always, getting ready for Santa!

Santa brought a pretty good haul this year, especially with 5 kids here!

My sister in law Amanda got matching jammies for all of the kids, so we took some Christmas Eve photos in front of the tree. 

 

And of course it isn't Christmas Eve without Evan reading "Twas the Night Before Christmas"

The kids had a blast opening all of their gifts on Christmas Eve, from so many people (including Santa). Henry was very excited to finish out his Harry Potter series (he's on book 4!), and Natalie and her cousin Charlotte both got American Girl dolls.

 

Here are the kids showing off their new fuzzy sleep socks that were in their stockings.

And Santa brought them each a nerf gun too.

Evan made me get in front of the camera for a couple of photos. Even with the giant bag of wrapping paper next to us, we're pretty cute I think.

Santa brought Natalie a combo case and bluetooth keyboard for her iPad, so of course that had to be tested out. You can also see the kids wearing their new watches that count their steps, and Henry with his new Tsum Tsum Storm Trooper.

Evan and I cooked Christmas night dinner - ham and shrimp (only shrimp for me!), with potatoes, vegetables, and bread. Very tasty!

Now a few family photos...

 

And we had fun with Facebook's Christmas photo filters.

Finally, with that many people there, we had to get a family photo. I set up my tripod and put the camera on a timer, then dashed in at the last second. Honestly, this was our first photo, and I think we did pretty darn well!

It was a crazy few days, and definitely more people than I am used to having around, but it was a ton of fun, and I'm so glad we were all able to be together.

Christmas with the Hoffmans

 Because we were hosting Evan's entire family for Christmas (more on that soon), we decided to celebrate Christmas with my family a few days before Christmas. We drove down to Mom & Dad's where Carrie and Chip met us and celebrated with presents and an early dinner. A pretty good haul for everyone, don't you think?

I made this collage from my favorite photos that I took that day, and thought I'd share it instead of a ton of different photos. Such a festive day and a lot of fun together! Carrie and I had to wear our matching Christmas leggings again, that we bought together the previous year.

Oh, and can't forget the final member of the family, who as you can tell was VERY excited by everyone in attendance. She was about to turn 10, so it gets to be a lot for an old gal. 

Really glad that my family lives close enough that we get to do things like this when we can't all be together on the actual holiday. And today is the perfect day to post this, as we just came back from their house and celebrating my mom's birthday! Even better was that it wasn't just them, us, and the kids - my mom's two sisters were also there, which happens so rarely. So we had a lovely time, the 10 of us, celebrating mom's birthday!

Christmas 2015

The last thing to post from 2015! And within the first month of 2016 - not too bad!

This year, we were fortunate to be able to be home and host both Thanksgiving and Christmas. Christmas was smaller - ended up being just my parents, aunt Linda, and the 4 of us on Christmas Eve and morning. Sadly, Carrie couldn't come due to work - she was so disappointed as she hasn't missed any Christmas with Henry, ever, but we know she'll be here next time!

I didn't take a lot of photos at Christmas this year, it turns out. Kind of disappointed in myself, actually! This year I didn't really take any photos of our decorations, or play with fun settings on my camera as I've done previously. I think I was just exhausted from everything going on that month, and wasn't up to it. But I did grab a couple of shots form Christmas Eve - here are the 4 of us after dinner (Firebirds, Village at Leesburg). We clean up pretty well, right?

 And the living room after Santa left all of the presents...

 then the aftermath on Christmas morning!

 The big winner was Lego. Evan and I purchased the kids a storage container for all of their Legos (old and new), which included a new set for each of them (in addition to the ones that Santa brought).

 What it's really all about is family, being together, and celebrating.

Christmas Part 2: Christmas with the Macbeths

Ok, finishing up Christmas! We celebrated Christmas Eve and Day with Evan's parents visiting, and continued our now-tradition of going out to eat for Christmas Eve, and cooking dinner on Christmas night. We went out to eat at Firebirds, in the shopping center just behind Wegmans. We had actually gone there two years ago for dinner, also with Evan's parents, but this year was better in that I wasn't very sick this time! I was actually starting to feel a slight cold coming on (which did really hit by Dec 26), but was definitely feeling a lot better than in 2012! I even decided to wear the same dress, to make this year a complete redo of the previous time there at Christmas. This year, we even got Henry to dress up!

 We then walked down to the Village at Leesburg Christmas tree to take a few pictures, despite the spitting rain! It was too pretty to miss.

 

 The kids were being so sweet together, walking back to the car!

 When we got home it was time to put out cookies for Santa and the reindeer!

 And then change into jammies and read "Twas the Night Before Christmas"

 Then, "Santa" came and I took a photo of all of the gifts that were left for Christmas morning.

 Christmas morning was very good for the kids! They loved everything that they got. I love seeing the looks of excitement on their faces! I enjoyed taking a few photos, but I really didn't want to spend the whole time snapping pictures, so I took a few and then put my camera away. It was more fun to just enjoy the time with them!

 As I've posted about previously, the kids love  playing "Face/Off". This year Santa stepped up the game, bringing the kids model heads, play doh, and tattoo pens so they can really make their creations! I think this was the first thing they really played with on Christmas morning.

 And I had to get a photo of the aftermath - everyone did pretty well!

 Including Calla, who received special carob biscuits!

There was actually one more Christmas surprise....a new keyboard! The kids were so excited to discover this in the basement, and since then we have made good use of it, as Evan has ordered some sheet music and been recovering his piano skills, and Natalie has begun taking piano lessons.

 It was a pretty musical Christmas!

 

After that Natalie started to feel a bit rundown and ended up sleeping for a good chunk of the day; poor thing had a fever for about 24 hours and was just totally run down! I felt so badly for her. She wasn't even up to eating the shrimp and scallops that I got and made for dinner, which she normally loves and we only have on special occasions! Poor thing. I was glad it passed within 24 hours; definitely not a fun time to be sick!

 Speaking of dinner, here was our lovely Christmas dinner at my dining room table! Evan cooked steak, I made the seafood, Lynn made mashed potatoes, and we cooked up some green beans and rolls. At that point, my Aunt Linda had also joined us (she stayed in town until Sunday morning, hanging out with us), and so she ate Christmas dinner with us too. It was fun to have a full house! I hope everyone else had an enjoyable Christmas too :)