Holidays 2016
Oh the Holidays. What a wonderful, beautiful time of year, especially if you have young people in your life. This year, we continued many holiday traditions and added a few new ones that we would love to keep going in the years to come. Our holiday celebrations started in mid-December with dinner and then tickets to the Yueltide Celebration downtown with Grammy. We have friends who grew up doing this with their families and now we know why! What a great evening and great show! Eli was a touch too young for the full show, but we still enjoyed our time nonetheless. Grammy's bank was so generous to offer dinner and pictures followed by the show. We LOVED this, and Yueltide will most definitely be a new tradition for us!
Then, we had a trip to Sullivan's and the North Pole with Grandma Jan. This was our second year doing this, and it will remain a staple of our holiday plans as long as we have little kiddos. Such a great time that we wrote a whole post on it here.
Another favorite is driving over to Fishers to check out the John Deere Green lights at Reynold's Farm Equipment. We get our jammies on, get some hot chocolate at Starbucks and drive over to look! The boys were loose in the back of the van and had a great time checking out the lights.
Since we were in the process of getting our house on the market during early December, we had to wait until about mid-month before we were able to get our tree. Like every other year since Luke was born we headed to Home Depot on Michigan Road to pick out our Christmas tree! This year we finally had a vehicle that we could actually tie the tree down too (we may have had one or two slide off the top of a sedan over the years). We picked out our tree and headed home to decorate it. This year was obviously an emotional one for us, as we knew it would be our last on Caribou Drive,
What a sweet night it was! We will miss that wood burning fire place and cozy living room for sure!
Then, the weekend before Christmas, we celebrated with Dave's family at Jan's house. The Forrester's, Bednarko's and Grandpa Jim were all present. It was a great time, yummy meal and wonderful, generous gifts! We are always spoiled by Grandma Jan. Our time this year also included a trip to the Children's Museum for the Yule Slide and snow ball fight!
Christmas was my holiday to work this year, and since I had a super generous co-worker offer to work my Christmas Eve, we were able to ask Santa at Sullivan's if he could come a day early since I had to work Christmas Day. He sweetly said that nurses are God's angels and that he would definitely be able to come early for us. Makes me tear up even typing it now.
The morning of the 23rd we went down to Grammy's and met Uncle Joe and Aunt Hannah and Uncle Evan for breakfast. We opened gifts with Grammy there and had a great time! Grammy also has the most thoughtful gifts and the boys loved their new games and books.
We headed home at nap time and then we went to church at Trader's Point in the evening for a wonderful service, then went home for a spaghetti dinner and cookie making at our house, just the four of us. We left out cookies and milk for Santa and carrots for the reindeer. The boys opened their Christmas jammies and put them on, excited for Santa's visit!
In the morning, we had a breakfast of french toast and bacon, and Santa brought the boys some walkie-talkies, new books, magic tracks, and a few other small toys. We relaxed and started a fire and spent the morning lounging around.
Then, on actual Christmas Eve, we headed down to the Cave's house for dinner and a great time. They are wonderful hosts! We spent a few hours there and then went home. I worked Christmas Day and Dave hosted a lunch at our house with all of our parents. He is also a wonderful host :)
We celebrated Christmas with my Dad and Joe, Hannah and Evan on the night of the 26th. They had dinner before I was home from work, and then we celebrated with gifts and festive drinks that night. The boys got some awesome, thoughtful, creative gifts and had a great time playing with their aunt and uncles. We watched our traditional Love Actually with my dad and had a great night!
Wooh. Awesome holiday season. We are so fortunate to have such a great family and have been able to spend time with everyone this holiday season! Bring it on new year!
Then, we had a trip to Sullivan's and the North Pole with Grandma Jan. This was our second year doing this, and it will remain a staple of our holiday plans as long as we have little kiddos. Such a great time that we wrote a whole post on it here.
Another favorite is driving over to Fishers to check out the John Deere Green lights at Reynold's Farm Equipment. We get our jammies on, get some hot chocolate at Starbucks and drive over to look! The boys were loose in the back of the van and had a great time checking out the lights.
Since we were in the process of getting our house on the market during early December, we had to wait until about mid-month before we were able to get our tree. Like every other year since Luke was born we headed to Home Depot on Michigan Road to pick out our Christmas tree! This year we finally had a vehicle that we could actually tie the tree down too (we may have had one or two slide off the top of a sedan over the years). We picked out our tree and headed home to decorate it. This year was obviously an emotional one for us, as we knew it would be our last on Caribou Drive,
What a sweet night it was! We will miss that wood burning fire place and cozy living room for sure!
Then, the weekend before Christmas, we celebrated with Dave's family at Jan's house. The Forrester's, Bednarko's and Grandpa Jim were all present. It was a great time, yummy meal and wonderful, generous gifts! We are always spoiled by Grandma Jan. Our time this year also included a trip to the Children's Museum for the Yule Slide and snow ball fight!
Christmas was my holiday to work this year, and since I had a super generous co-worker offer to work my Christmas Eve, we were able to ask Santa at Sullivan's if he could come a day early since I had to work Christmas Day. He sweetly said that nurses are God's angels and that he would definitely be able to come early for us. Makes me tear up even typing it now.
The morning of the 23rd we went down to Grammy's and met Uncle Joe and Aunt Hannah and Uncle Evan for breakfast. We opened gifts with Grammy there and had a great time! Grammy also has the most thoughtful gifts and the boys loved their new games and books.
We headed home at nap time and then we went to church at Trader's Point in the evening for a wonderful service, then went home for a spaghetti dinner and cookie making at our house, just the four of us. We left out cookies and milk for Santa and carrots for the reindeer. The boys opened their Christmas jammies and put them on, excited for Santa's visit!
In the morning, we had a breakfast of french toast and bacon, and Santa brought the boys some walkie-talkies, new books, magic tracks, and a few other small toys. We relaxed and started a fire and spent the morning lounging around.
Then, on actual Christmas Eve, we headed down to the Cave's house for dinner and a great time. They are wonderful hosts! We spent a few hours there and then went home. I worked Christmas Day and Dave hosted a lunch at our house with all of our parents. He is also a wonderful host :)
We celebrated Christmas with my Dad and Joe, Hannah and Evan on the night of the 26th. They had dinner before I was home from work, and then we celebrated with gifts and festive drinks that night. The boys got some awesome, thoughtful, creative gifts and had a great time playing with their aunt and uncles. We watched our traditional Love Actually with my dad and had a great night!
Wooh. Awesome holiday season. We are so fortunate to have such a great family and have been able to spend time with everyone this holiday season! Bring it on new year!
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