Christmas 2018 Recap

We have been doing a lot of holiday things so far this month, and we packed the last week and a half of December with family events and together time. The Friday before Christmas, we got together with our immediate family and exchanged presents, had some yummy food, and enjoyed each other's company. 

Saturday morning, we worked on our family potato sausage. We do it all the old fashioned way with old grinders and sausage stuffers and it is a fun family activity... even if some people think the potato sausage is disgusting. This was the first year Ben came and he was super interested in the process. The girls aren't much help with the actual sausage making, but they love hanging out, coloring, and snacking. We have the process down, so it only takes us a couple hours to do everything then we enjoy lunch afterwards.

Christmas Eve is when all the action happens in our family. The girls loved getting dressed up and wouldn't stop posing for pictures in front of the tree. I loved Cora's little curtsy and Ida does what we call her "panda bow" where she bows like the panda after a fight in Kung Fu Panda.

Cora has been practicing for the Christmas play for a couple weeks. She was the angel and had two lines "sorry, we don't have room for you at the inn" and "Is this the end of the Christmas road?" She recited both of her lines perfectly and looked super cute in her angel costume. She loved getting to practice and hang out with her cousins at church.

After church, we went to my Aunt and Uncle's house for dinner and presents with our extended family. Cora immediately ran off with her cousins and I barely saw her the entire time. Ida was mostly glued to my hip (nothing new there). We stayed pretty late, and had an awesome time.

Christmas morning was slow, but fun. Cora woke up pretty early (around 7:30), so she opened one present then we worked on a puzzle she received the night before. Ben and Ida woke up around 10 and the girls opened the rest of their Santa presents. We had plenty of presents to play with from our family events, so we hung out and played most of the day.

Santa always brings the girls matching outfits... which happened to be pretty similar to the nightgowns my parents got them. They wore their matching outfits to our family get together on Christmas night. Ida spent the first hour napping and Cora ran off immediately to play with her cousins again. Christmas night is much more relaxed and we hang out, eat, play games, and everyone trickles out depending on how tired they are. We ended up staying fairly late because we knew we had nothing else planned the rest of the week.

I had the week after Christmas off from work. Most of our family and friends still had Christmas stuff with their families, so we just spent a lot of time sleeping in, hanging around the house, playing with all of our toys, and working on crafts. I did work on one project that I'll share later, but I loved the slowness of these days and how it all became one big blur of relaxation.