On Christmas eve Haylee made some food for Santas reindeer so that they were sure to find us at Grandmas house. She had fun making it and then went outside and sprinkled it on Grandmas lawn so the reindeer would have something to eat. It was really cute.
My sister Angie and her family were also able to come for the holidays. It was so good to see them. They have a little boy who is almost two and a new little girl born in November. It was fun having her there because we both had our babies. My Mom said it was fun watching us. She said it looked like we were playing with dolls. Its funny because this is what we did when we were younger. We would each have our baby doll and we would stick in in our shirt to feed it and rock it to sleep. Now we have our real babies and it was fun. Kyle and Matilda are only three months apart so they will hopefully always be good friends.
I got the cutest picture of my Mom and Kyle. I thought it was so precious. Grandma has that special touch with the babies. I use a pacifier to put Kyle to sleep but Grandma doesn't need one she just rocked him and out he went. She was also able to get his crazy hair to lay down. I came home and gave it a try and it didn't turn out as good as her job. Again I guess she just has the touch. We also gave Kyle his first haircut together so that he would no longer have a mullet in the back. It turned out so cute. I thought it made him look older.
My family has a tradition that every year on Christmas eve we put on the Christmas play. We all dress up in robes and each play a part of the nativity. we have been doing this for years. We have all of them on tape and it is a blast going back and watching them all as we grow up. I think the first time we did it I was lik 4 years old so it has been a while. Now that we have some grandkids though we thought it would be fun to let them join in. This year Haylee played the angel. She did a great job too. She even had a line, she said "fear not, Jesus is born" to the shepards, then she flapped her wings really hard. It was the cutest thing ever. I think she had a great time playing the angel. I was a shepard and Seth was a wise man.
So kinda as a gag gift my older brother got underwear for My younger brother, My Dad, and Seth. They made sure that they all opened them together. It was really funny watching them open there underwear. Seths was spiderman, and Kevins was batman and Im not sure what my Dads was but it was pretty funny.
Haylee was so excited for Santa to come that it was difficult getting her to go to sleep. Seth and I had fun too getting everything set up. Santa gave her a doll house this year. She wanted an easy bake oven but we thought she was still a little bit young for that so she got some play dough that she can make hamburgers out of instead. She was pretty happy with what she got I think and had a good time opening her gifts. She also got a little computer that she can play games on. I like it because it helps her learn her numbers and letters. We also gave her a jewelry box. She liked playing with mine and told me for weeks that she wanted her own jewelry box. So Seth being the great Dad that he is went to Khols after thankgiving sale and stood in line for a couple hours to buy her a jewelry box that was on a killer sale. He said that some women standing in line next to him were oohing and ahhhhing over how cute he was buying a jewelry box for his daughter. He is a pretty goood Dad.
I think Haylee had a good Christmas this year and was pretty excited about what she got. Kyle got a couple of things also and Haylee was more than willing to help him open his gifts also. He just got some teethers and socks and a toy. He pretty much didn't know what was going on but it was fun anyway.We had so much fun visiting but we had to say goodbye and head home.I flew down early with the kids and then Seth drove down about a week later. Then we all drove home last week. We found that it was a really good idea flying me and the kids down on our drive home. It was an adventure. Driving that far with two kids is tough. Kyle is nursing so we had to stop at least once every three hours for him to eat. We decided that it would be easiest on everybody if we split the trip into three days. This made it about 6-7 hours a day. The first day wasn't too bad except that Haylee threw up everywhere about 3 hours into the drive. So we stopped at a gas station and got her out to clean her up. I took her into the bathroom to clean her and the car seat while Seth cleaned out the car. It was so bad I just threw her jeans away. It wasn't worth cleaning them off to me. We stayed that night at my Grandmas near sacramento. We didn't get going early enough that morning and got caught in some snow. They ended up closing the road on us and we were sitting in traffic for about an hour while Kyle screamed in the back seat. We then had to call my parents to find us a hotel at the last minute before they were all booked. We got up the next morning with a little more than we had planned to go. It started okay but when we got to Portland things got bad once again. We got stuck in the worlds biggest traffic jam and sat in the car for over two hours. I think we figured we went about eight miles in those two hours. Haylee actually did surprisingly well during this, she sang the get out of the way song to the cars in front of us. I just got Kyle out of his seat since we weren't moving anyway and held him. Finally we got through that and about the last hour home we ran into some pretty thick fog. We made it about midnight that night though. I just told Seth that this was one of those experiences that you one day will look back on and just laugh. Not yet but maybe one day. It was an adventure life is full of them. This will be one of those, "remember the time" stories, you gotta have those right. I am just so thankful for the time I was able to have with my family this year for the holidays and grateful that we made it home safely, that is the most important thing. Hope everyone had a great Christmas this year.
