Christmas Fun 2015

What a wonderful Christmas we had!  It was very relaxing to not have to go anywhere this Christmas, but sad too because we love all the family time!  This year since I'm decently far along with #3 we decided to take it easy and stay at home.  We started a few Christmas traditions of our own in the past few years so it was nice to be able to continue them and add to them potentially too!

For the past few weeks, I have been making a pinata for the kids.  It was a tradition when I was growing up, and I really thought it would be fun to continue it as well.  Grandma has been the one to make the pinata for the past 3 years, but since she wasn't going to be here over Christmas I decided to do one myself.  I remember helping my mom put the newspaper on our pinata when we were little, so that part of it wasn't new to me.  The actual decorating of the pinata and stuffing it with goodies was new though.  I decided to start easy by making a Christmas tree.

Here it is from start to finish.  Now that I've had time to think about it, I think I would have done some things differently artistically.  But now I know so that next year maybe I will be more creative and stuff.  I felt a little bit rushed this year too.  The kids didn't seem to mind though...

Alyssa was so into it this year, it was a lot of fun to watch.  Once Luke saw what Alyssa was up to he wanted to get involved too.  Although once Alyssa smacked a hole in it, he wanted no part in hurting the poor Christmas tree.  He wouldn't go near it and he was very sad.  So Alyssa had to take charge and get the candy and toys out.  Luke liked it once all the stuff was out though.

We also got an ice cream machine as a gift from Brett's parents.  Since when it came to our house it said Ice Cream Maker all over the box, we just didn't bother wrapping it and decided we would use it on Christmas Eve.  We got everything out and ready to go.  The kids were VERY excited to eat ice cream.

They watched it go around and around for a long time actually.  Then we got to enjoy the fruits of our labor, and boy was it good.  We decided for our first try we would go with the standard vanilla.

While the ice cream was being made, we did one of the new traditions that I started for the kids last year, a Christmas Scavenger Hunt.  My kids LOVE scavenger hunts.  I have to make them up for them all the time.  So, last year I decided to incorporate one into Christmas.  This year, I focused on the main characters in the Disney movie Prep and Landing.  If you've never seen them, they're pretty cute.  Anyway, at the end of the hunt they get new Christmas pajamas.

I figured they could kind of match while they still don't know any different :)

Those are some of the fun things we did over our four day weekend.  It was an action packed weekend of fun with my family.  I loved getting all the snuggles, and enjoying the happiness of the season.  We definitely are blessed.