It seems like our Christmas celebrations lasted two weeks this year! Fine by me! It was so fun sharing Baylor's first Christmas so many times with so many different parts of our family! The Sunday before Christmas, I put Katie and Baylor in their first matching outfits! I took them into the main area of our church and snapped some quick pictures! Of course, Max had to get in on the action too!
I liked this one best - they are so much fun together! I like how similar their chins looks in this picture!
On Christmas Eve, we spread reindeer food in the front yard again. She made it at school and it consisted of oatmeal and glitter - a delicacy for reindeer! She laid out 9 handfuls of the stuff - one for each reindeer.
We also boxed up Pete the Elf. In our house, you can touch and play with the elf on Christmas Eve because he technically doesn't need his magic anymore. And we let Katie box him up and get him ready for Santa to take him back to the North Pole for the year.
We did some reading of the Christmas Story from her Jesus Storybook Bible...It was a great way to end the evening focused on the meaning of the holiday.
This is her big gift from Santa. It's a Barbie Vet station and it came loaded with a few animals and all the tools a vet would need to fix animals!
Our mantle! I ordered Baylor's stocking before I pulled all the decorations down from the attic. Apparently, I ordered Katie a smaller stocking years ago and just didn't remember. So Katie has the smaller stocking...I tried to go back and order her a new one but Pottery Barn was all out for the year. Hopefully I will remember this before they sell out next year!
On Christmas day, Katie was super sick. She had been battling some GI/stomach issues for a few weeks and it didn't get any better on Christmas day. It seemed like that was the day she felt the absolute worst! You can tell by the look on her face here that she feels awful. After completing her puzzle, she spent most of the rest of the day in bed.
We always go over to my Aunt Betsy's house on Christmas night. Katie made a super recovery so we decided to venture out to be with family. (For the record, her stomach issues had already been ruled out as NOT contagious in the weeks we'd been dealing with it - so no, I didn't take a stomach bug to be around other kids.) We had fun playing with other cousins and talking about what everyone did for Christmas. Here's one of my favorites of Katie and Griffin!
My cousin Josh and his wife Tasha had a little girl about 5 weeks after Baylor was born. They had met each other around Thanksgiving but it was fun to see them as they had both obviously gotten bigger and more interactive over the last month. Here's Baylor and Eden "holding hands."
We got together with Doug's family the weekend after Christmas. All the cousins were together and of course we tried to get all 8 of them to sit for a picture. We told them we'd open presents once they took a picture for us! That got them to sit for sure...But no amount of bribing and coaxing can possibly work to get all 8 of them smiling or even looking in the same direction!
And just so I'll remember one day...
Back row - Dylan (5), Chase (3), Cole (4), Katie (4)
Front row - Forrest (9 months), Lilly (2), Cooper (14 months), Baylor (4 months)
