Christmas 2014

It was a fantastic Christmas! It was so fun watching Raegan's excitement over her gifts (especially the Santa gift), and watching Ava take it all in.

 

Checking out Ava's Santa gift

Raegan did a flailing crazy dance over her Barbie gymnastics set. :)

She was so excited!

Ava liked her walker.

I see you photobombing, Radar.

 

#avassillyfaces

 

 

 

 

Silly brother.

I love watching the three of them together. <3 p="">

 

 

The bow was just as exciting at the rattle. ;)

 

Some Christmas morning reality - Raegan pouting while her siblings watch on.

And the cute, less realistic picture.

Trash is fun too!

 

Presents at Grandma J's house

:)

 

Christmas with the Kelleys

My brother had to work on Christmas Eve because the hospital he works at is lame, so we ended up doing our Christmas Eve celebration (tradition for as long as I can remember) the day after Christmas. It's slowly changing, as we all add our own little touches to it, but I look forward to it so much. We ended up hosting it at our house this year, to try to help my mom out a little since my dad had been hospitalized so close to Christmas. My house isn't quite set up for entertaining in the winter (in the summer we all just go outside on the back deck to eat) but we managed to get up and down the stairs without spilling food. :)

Christmas with the Joneses

For lunch on Christmas Day we went over to Luke's parents' house. It wasn't quite as much of a madhouse this year as it has been in recent years, because some people weren't there. Raegan got a princess tent from her grandparents and a "texting" alphabet device from her aunt and uncle in Missouri. She mainly uses the texter as a phone or camera. It was pretty cute to watch her walking around talking into it.

This is Thomas, my mother-in-law's first great grandchild. Raegan was pretty taken with "Baby Thomnas" as she kept calling him.

Christmas at Home

For Christmas Eve, we kept it pretty low key this year. Since we weren't doing our traditional chili on Christmas Eve with my side of the family until Monday, we just kind of hung out on Saturday. We watched Rudolph and A Garfield Christmas and introduced Raegan to popcorn. She looooooved popcorn! :)

What can be better than A Garfield Christmas and popcorn?!!

Oh, Zane.

Snuggle times.

Christmas morning was really nice. Zane's mom didn't come to get him until 9:30, so we had plenty of time to open gifts and eat breakfast (I always make pancakes and bacon on Christmas morning). Raegan and Zane really enjoyed their gifts. Zane got a .22 rifle (he and Luke are really in to target shooting right now) and 9 months worth of subscription to XBox Live (so he can play video games with his friends, each at their own house), and various odds and ends in his stocking. Raegan got a Sesame Street playhouse, some extra figures for it, a huge Cookie Monster pillow, princess dresses (from Santa) and some puzzles, along with various odds and ends in her stocking. Raegan is really enjoying playing with her little Sesame Street figures a lot. It's super cute to hear her make them talk to each other. :)

One of the most exciting parts to me (dork!) is that we did not use our credit cards for Christmas for the second year in a row. And actually, as long as we don't have to pull out of savings before Luke gets paid next week, this will be our first year of paying Christmas 100% out of pocket without even dipping into savings. We started shopping back in October, and I am extremely proud of myself for this accomplishment! :)