Christmas Weekend 2020

Merry Christmas week!  Just dropping in to share a few highlights from our Christmas weekend at home.  It actually ended up being our favorite Christmas so far, despite not being able to see anyone.

The boys are just starting to get a little bit about Christmas and while they don't completely understand, we did get to experience a little of the magic for the first time and it was pretty amazing.

Our holiday festivities started off on Christmas Eve-Eve by playing with their own felt Christmas tree, Santa stickers, and baking for the first time.

The boys had such a fun day and surprisingly enjoyed the baking.  We made some very simple muffins for our Christmas Eve morning breakfast.

Christmas Eve was an amazing day.  It started off with Santa visiting our neighborhood in a fire truck.  Our truck loving boys were in pure heaven!  We also did a virtual Santa experience online which explained to the boys again how Santa works.

The twins also helped me make some cookies and decorate them.  They were so excited about it.

I got them their own shakers to put the sprinkles on the already iced cookies and it was a huge hit.

And here's some proof I was there :-).

The cookies actually came out kind of cute and tasted delish.

Before bed, we explained to them again how Santa works and got together a plate of cookies for him complete with carrots for the reindeer.

We even went outside and sprinkled more reindeer food (oatmeal with glitter) in the grass.

Hunter kept looking for Santa in the chimney!

It was so cute and these boys totally hammed it up.

Once we put the boys down for bed we had our Christmas Eve dinner.  It's become a tradition for us to order seafood including oysters for the holiday and we enjoyed them so much.

Christmas itself was pretty darn magical.  When the boys woke up they were surprised the cookies were gone and were so much fun to play with.  They opened their stockings and then we let them go into the basement where we were keeping the rest of their gifts.

They were so surprised and excited.

I now truly understand the excitement of a toddler on Christmas morning and it's pure magic.

They played and played until they were completely worn out for their nap.

One of the last-minute gifts we got them was sleds which actually came in super handy because for the first time in my memory we got snow on Christmas.

It was really funny because the boys had NO idea what they were actually for and they called them "boats" and pulled each other around in them.

After the boy's nap, we bundled everyone up in snowsuits and went outside to play in what was left of the snow.  There had been more in the morning but there was just enough left to still play in it.

Daddy quickly showed them what their "boats" were made for.

It was crazy cold, but we still had so much fun.

They even got to go down a small hill on their own.  They kept saying AGAIN, AGAIN at the bottom of the hill.

We came in completely exhausted from the excitement!

In the middle of all that we had all sorts of lovely family, zoom calls to stay connected with everyone.  It was so wonderful to see and talk to our family.  It definitely made up feel like we weren't actually alone on the holiday.

Our Christmas day dinner was also super untraditional.  We had the rest of our seafood which was mussels in red and a white wine butter sauce.  I was so exhausted from the crazy day and cooking that I didn't even put them in a pretty bowl but they tasted incredible.

I was a little worried Christmas 2020 would feel sad or hard but honestly, we had the best few days.  The boys were pure magic this holiday and it made us super excited for the holidays to come with them.

I sure do love this little family of mine.

I know a lot of you reading might have had a harder day and not a great holiday, so please know that my heart goes out to you. We are all handling the chaos of this year in our own little ways and it's totally ok to NOT have loved the day.

Thanks for sharing this special day with us!  Merry Christmas everyone and here's hoping and praying that 2021 is actually better.