Christmas Eve

 Today was a wonderful day. The littles have been looking forward to Christmas for so long and the energy in the house was high all day long as they anticipated the festivities ahead and FINALLY being able to open their presents tomorrow morning. I've had them all wrapped and ready to go for a while. I stashed them under my bed and often found them in my room shaking and guessing.

 

We are all enjoying our new baby sister and everyone takes turns holding her. Camilla loves on her the most though and has no problem snuggling her all day every day. 

This stage is always the best in many ways because they sleep all day! Lily can sleep through all of the noise and chaos that comes with our big family and I'm so grateful for that!

 

 

With the incredibly warm temperatures we've been enjoying, we decided to get outside mid-afternoon for some fresh air. It was close to ten degrees outside, so I bundled up Lily and brought her along for some sunshine. The boys immediately began a snowball fight that lasted most of the way down the road. There was lots of laughing as they ganged up on their dad. I walked mostly behind so that I wouldn't get beaned by any snowballs that went off course. 

When we got inside, Mr. Stannix went to work making Grampy's Tacos. This has become our Christmas even tradition and will be even more fun when the littles are a bit older and can help flip the taco shells. He poured his heart into these for over three hours (they're a lot of work!). 

 

 

As they came out of the pan, Hyrum spooned the ground beef onto them and I closed them up with toothpicks to get them ready for the second frying. When we finally used up all the batter (we made a triple batch) it was time to re-fry them and eat!

We invited Gramma and Grampa over to enjoy them with us and it was total chaos of course. They are so good to put up with us! There was pop cans sliding out of greasy hands and me crawling under the table yelling "GOT IT!" as the pop glugs out onto the floor. It was sticky and crazy and I hardly had time to sit and stuff my face with tacos. While we were wiping floors, Ollie was going around giving everyone hugs over and over again. He was feeling happy and excited and had to express it somehow. After dinner everyone was wired, running, jumping around excitely. It was so loud I could hardly think or speak. 

 

 

We gathered everone in the playroom and passed out their Christmas Eve presents. They all opened their jammies amidst shouting and chaos and then went downstairs to change into them. Once life had calmed down a little bit, we gathered in front of the tree for some Christmas Eve pictures. 

 

We then headed over to Gramma and Grampas for a shrimp ring and quick bedtime snack. It was getting late! The littles ended up out on the deck to cool off (these new jammies were quite warm apparently). They loved looking at the stars and one of them even thought they saw Santa's sleigh flying off in the distance. They even grabbed a pair of binoculars just to make sure and went to bed excited for Christmas morning. Camilla even set an alarm to wake them at 11pm because her Santa tracker app said that is approximately what time Santa would be flying over and they were determined to catch him. They had even rehearsed in the afternoon who would wake who and how they would sneak up the stairs.

My Dad and Mr. Stannix spent a good portion of the night assembling the foosball table while I finished wrapping some odds and ends. I carried all of the gifts out to the tree just as they were finishing up. We cralwed into bed exhausted, knowing that the littles would be awake in just a few hours!