Christmas 2013

I am having a hard time wrapping my head around the fact that it is now 2014.

I still can't believe Christmas is over, let alone it is a new year.

How does this happen!?

I tried to keep things pretty low key around here this holiday season.  I didn't want to lose myself in the insanity that Christmas sometimes can be. 

We had some friends over for our Annual Gingerbread House Decorating towards the middle of December.  We are going to try and invite different families every year so we can get to know more people in our ward.

 

I remembered to take a picture before we started decorating, but didn't get any picture of our friends or their finished houses.  What can you do?

 

I really love this tradition.  It's a Cullumber Family tradition that I hope we continue to do every single year.

 

Here's a few camera phone pictures of our completed houses.  Wesley and Mallory did this one.

 

 

And Zachary and I decorated this one.

 

 

We ended up giving away ours to a family in our ward.

 

We had to give it away before little fingers ate all the candy off of it.  This girl gets up on the dining room table all by herself.  Her shenanigans are for an entirely different post all on it's own. 

 

We ended up eating Mallory and Wesley's house.  It. Was. Delicious.

 

 

 

Instead of making TONS of goodies for friends and neighbors, like I tend to do every year, I went simple this year with some hand soap I had bought at JoAnn Fabrics months ago. They were $1 each.  I found these cute tags off Pinterest that say "We WASH you a merry Christmas" and called it good.  Best dollar ever spent! 

 

 

 

Christmas Eve - we sprinkled some special reindeer food (oats with glitter) out on the "lawn" (we don't have lawn at the moment .. it's just dead weeds).   We wanted to make sure the reindeers could find our house.

 

Then we decorated our Christmas Plates - a Danish tradition we have done on my side of the family since my Dad was little.

You decorate a plate and leave it out on the dining room table and Santa fills it with candy, nuts, fruit (but he forgot about the fruit this year .. whoops) and some gum, little toys, etc.  

 I was really impressed by Zachary - he wrote his name on his plate all by himself.  He has learned a lot at pre-school this year and it's fun to watch him learn and grow.  Mallory made a cute snowman and Daddy helped Avery draw on her plate as well.

 

(Pictures from my phone)

 

After plates, we opened up our Christmas Pajamas. 

 

I love Avery's face in this picture.

 

And Zach's goofy face in this one.

 

Mallory was thrilled to get "feet pajamas" this year.  She hasn't had them since she was really little.  Zach was super excited about his Avengers PJ's .. as you can tell.

 

 

 

Santa came!!

 

 

All the hard work we go through to make Christmas memorable is totally worth it .. just look at those happy faces.

 

This is the only picture I got of Avery on Christmas.  She was SUPER excited about her new battery-operated toothbrush.  She kind of has an obsession with toothbrushes.  I guess there are worse things.

 

Here's a little bit of the chaos that ensued after presents started getting unwrapped.  My living room looked like this for a few days after Christmas. 

 

 

Merry Christmas!! 

 

Love, The Cullumber's