Holiday Season 2016

Part of the process of trying to become the person I want to be includes finding ways to enjoy the holidays and make them what we want them to be, and cutting out all of the excess. We want to spend time as a family, and with our extended family, focus on the time instead of gifts, share laughs, and start new traditions and keep up old ones that worked for us. 

Generally, I don't enjoy the holidays because of the focus on material things, excessive demands on time, and having to deal with all of the items- setting up the tree, taking it down, decorating the mantel, taking it down, dealing with all of the gifts coming in when I already feel like we have too many things in our house. My favorite thing is making and eating our family recipe cookies. 

Somehow, I was chosen to be the 'room mom' for Abby's class. The teachers gave me a handout to read to see if it was something I was interested in and to let them know. I read through it, decided it wasn't for me, and planned to tell them on the next school day. Instead, I got an email from some other lady who coordinates the room parents... ???... And somehow I signed up to plan the class Christmas party. Luckily they wanted to keep it simple, so I did. 

The grandmother I worked with was a girl scout leader and our planning consisted of one 15 minute phone conversation, where she told me she had 2 crafts prepared already, and I told her what I was thinking for the snack, and we hung up saying, "See you Thursday!" I'm a very lazy preschool mom. Side note, I also don't plan to do either of my daughters' homework for them. (I think it's pretty common in this area to help with it). 

So we had cookies, and apples and juice boxes, and the kids did a couple of easy crafts, and that was it! She brought these funny elf hats and of course Abs didn't want to wear it so we put it on baby sister. And took pictures and laughed.

One of the traditions we wanted to expand on this year was visiting the ICE exhibit at the Gaylord Texan. Instead of just going for the morning, we got a room and spent the night. It was a zoo!

We learned that we should eat lunch before we get there to save money. (We spent $30 on some weird snacks inlcuding chicken salad and cereal, no milk)

We learned to schedule it earlier in the year and not on a Sunday night, especially not on a Sunday with a Cowboy's game because the one restaurant open will have an hour wait.

We learned to book Cookies with Mrs. Claus in advance, and that it's every hour on the hour. We learned to skip the gingebread house making. (Another $30 down the drain on disgusting prepackaged kits that you could get at the grocery store for $10). 

Bean and Abby went to ICE while Francie and I napped and watched Netflix in the room. 

Bean said it was fun, but crowded, and he liked it better last time because we were able to skip the queue that they had to wait through this time.

For dinner, we got room service and it was glorious. The food was great, and we watched Ernest Saves Christmas while we ate. It only cost $150! (hahaha)

After the baby went to sleep, only an hour later than normal, we finished the movie. Then I turned on Bob Ross, and turned the lights off, thinking it would be so boring it would put Abby to sleep. No such luck. It put Bean to sleep almost immediately and Abby and I stayed up watching it for an hour and a half! 

I was talking to the TV saying, "Bob, what are you painting? I don't understand."

Abby said, "Mom, he can't hear you, he's in the TV." And then later talked to the TV, "Bob, you are in the TV and I am in the hotel room and you can't hear me because you are in the TV." We really laughed at that. Once I turned it off, we both fell asleep, and this was the beginning of Francie's two weeks of terrible sleep. She was up several times and only fell back asleep if I nursed her. I figured it was ok because it was just one night in the hotel room. It continued once we got to Houston and for a week after we got home. 

The next morning, since kids wake up super early, we got the experience we wanted- a nice quiet walk through the hotel to look at all of the decor. Abby loved this reindeer. We had a quick breakfast at Whataburger (much cheaper than the $40 per adult breakfast at the hotel) and hit the road.

I never understood why people would say traveling with kids is hard, and now I know that's because we have one really great traveler in big sister. She slept for a little while, colored and did activities for the rest of the time, and was generally content. 

Little sister, well, she didn't sleep longer than 30 minutes at a time (normal naps are 1 to 1.5 hours) and we stopped at least twice for her each way. I used to be able to make the entire drive only stopping once or less! We also had some issues with Bean's tires going flat so we had to stop several times to get them aired up. What a relief to finally arrive at my mom's house!

We mainly hung out with my parents during the days, my cousin came over one day with her kids, and mom's family came over one afternoon. It was so nice, exactly what the holidays should be. I decided to see what Uncle Ben would do, and I walked up and handed Francie to him without saying anything, and he did just fine! He looks very comfortable. The first time he held Abby he was afraid to move a muscle. hahaha! And Francie was comfortable as well. 

Abby took a nap with Paw Paw Buddy one day. And my favorite thing is going through old photo albums to see what I can find.

This gem- the best dad in the world, me pretending to be a baby and posing (Abs does this too), and my brother looking a lot like his niece Francie. When I showed the picture to Ben, he also noticed the amazing corduroy couch in the background!

One trend this year is to take 'brelfie's', or breastfeeding selfies and use an app to put the tree of life in the photo. I don't have any pictures of myself nursing, but I loved the way these looked like a Van Gogh painting, so I went for it. I absolutely love it, especially since baby is wearing my favorite PJ's which say 'love'. It's funny how you just have time for more stuff when there are other people around to help do things like bath time, reading stories, etc.

We drove home the day before Christmas Eve, so we would be rested and ready for our favorite tradition: pillow fort, christmas movies, cookies all day, and tipping the pizza guy an insane amount.

Uncle Ben and Aunt Mer gave the girls a fort kit, so we made an igloo and got it all comfy for movie watching. We made cookies that were too sweet, ate some of them, and ordered our pizza. Pop and Gigi stopped by for a few minutes and the pizza guy walked away without looking at the money. We were a little let down, we wanted to see him excited. And then he knocked on the door again and very kindly thanked us. It was all worth it!

One of my favorite things this holiday season was seeing this sweet gift wearing the pjs we used to announce my pregnancy last year. They are cute, and all I see is joy.

For Christmas Day, we went to Pop & Gigi's, had lunch and opened a million gifts and relaxed.