Jingle Bells

Here you go, Mom and Dad:

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! :)

Koen and Ryan's Birthday Party

Since my nephews Koen and Ryan have their birthdays within a few days of each other, Zac and Deeanna decided to have a joint party for the two of them. Raegan loooooves "Baby Ryan" and she was super excited for the birthday party. I think she was a little overwhelmed while we were there, because it was a lot of people she didn't know. But she was pretty content sitting on Granny's lap.

Opening presents is serious business, yo.

Just chillin.

My brother is a scary beast. :)

I love how happy Koen looks in this picture!

Ryan made short work of his cupcake.

Fun in the Snow

We finally got a decent amount of snow this week! Hopefully it will all hang around until Christmas. I love having a white Christmas! Raegan and I came home from work/daycare on Wednesday to find Zane building a snow fort in the backyard. Raegan isn't too keen on touching the snow yet (even with gloves on) but she did enjoy scooping it into a bowl with a spoon, and trying to use the big shovel.

Snow fort in the making

Silly girl

Raegan loved using the shovel

Candy Cane Yarn Wreath

This is my latest craft thanks to Pinterest. I found it when I was looking for wreath ideas. The link was actual to someone's Etsy site where they had this wreath for sale. I thought it was priced a bit much at $39, considering that it cost me about $9 to make, and I have enough silvery sprig and yarn left over to make another if I bought another wreath. It was pretty time consuming, because wrapping with yarn takes a lot of time and patience. I pretty much just pulled up some shows I like on Netflix and listen/watched and wrapped. I think I'm going to add some more spray to it, and hot glue it down, but I really rather like the finished result. Maybe I should get into Etsy someday, because when I went to link up to the original wreath, I saw that it had sold. :)