Christmas!!

I am a little behind on posting. I haven't been in the mood to do much (being pregnant at all) so the more I put off something the harder it is to go back and do it. Am I alone in this feeling? But I don't want Janen to look back on this blog one day and say, "mom, what did we do for my second Christmas?"

So here we go! This year we spent Christmas at home. We were invited to go to California to Join my brother and sister in law and their adorable boys, but didn't really feel like we could afford it this year with the whole 6 month unemployment thing. I will admit, it was really hard for me to get in the Christmas spirit this year. It wasn't until the last week that I really felt like it was Christmas. I had no desire to decorate the house and the majority of the things I planned on us doing for the 12 Days of Christmas went out the window. It's hard to get excited about anything when you feel sick all the time. These days my excitement comes when a random good day hits me and I use that energy to clean my disastrous house and feel somewhat good about myself cause I'm being productive. But there are a few things that we did this year that I would like to take note of.

First of all, we finally did get the tree up a couple of weeks before Christmas and Janen did a great job staying out of it and letting the ornaments sit nicely on the tree. She didn't even really mess with the presents under it either. It may not seem like much, but that was a small blessing for me to not have to constantly fight her on that. Our favorite pastime to do as a family this year, was to watch Christmas movies. I finally got around to watching It's a Wonderful Life. This movie will forever be a favorite Christmas movie of mine.

Like I mentioned earlier, we didn't do my original plan of the 12 Days of Christmas list I made. But we did do a couple of things on them. One was baking, building and decorating a gingerbread house as a family. Janen decorated a ginger bread man and had lots of fun helping us. James' sister Emily and her two kids joined us.This is a tradition we kept up from last year. We really enjoy doing this as a family and hope that Janen and our other baby will too.

Another activity we did this year (sorry no pictures--we have the world's lamest camera) was the Hogle Zoo lights. I agreed to do one activity outside and to brace the cold. Let's just say morning sickness and shivering don't combine. So I bundled up extra good, had hot cocoa and took a zofran so that I could enjoy this outing with my family. Even though the majority of the animals were asleep (except the monkys they were too busy monkying around) it was fun to see them. Janen had a great time. She was such a trooper through all the cold, it wasn't until we exited the zoo and headed to our car that she started crying because of how cold it was. I am excited to take her back to the zoo one day when it is much warmer outside.

This year we decided we wanted to start our own tradition as a family. Although we love the cinnamon-pull-aparts and the the breakfast casserole, I wanted to do something that would involve my young children more. So when I saw a picture on Pininterest of a pancake decorate like Santa, i knew I wanted that to be our tradition.

We had fun making these and Janen loved eating them as did we. 

This year, Santa brought Janen a kitchen. we only got a couple of photos before our Camera died (this thing literally has an addiction to batteries because it sucks them up very fast).

I can say with all confidence that Janen loved this gift! She didn't care to open up any other presents. We had to tell her it was a gift that went with her kitchen until she finally consented to move away from the kitchen to open another gift. She was happy if it was a "kitchen" item, but didn't care much for the cute dresses I got her. LOL! It's so fun to watch her play pretend with the kitchen and to see her do things in her kitchen and with her new baby doll that are similar to the things I do/say to her. 

It's true what they say, Christmas Morning is just so much more enjoyable when you have little ones. I would be fine getting nothing just to watch the joy on my children's face. To think that next Christmas we will have two little ones to enjoy the holidays with!