Twas the Night Before Christmas...!

No matter how early I start my Christmas preparations each year, I always seem to feel overwhelmed as Christmas gets closer because there are always just a few more things that need to be done. This year,
since the boys were out of school the entire week prior to Christmas, I did my best to get everything done early so that I could enjoy the week with them…and it worked out perfectly! I still ended up having to go shopping for one thing or another every day, but I didn’t let that stop us from having fun.

During the week, we got some lunch at Subway one day (Hayden’s favorite place to eat), another day we went with Rod to see the lights at Willard Bay (and we even got to ride on a hay ride to see the lights), still another day we went to see the movie “Tangled” (which wasn’t the boys first choice, but they ended up loving it) and throughout the entire week the boys and I put together a 1000 piece puzzle...because we love puzzles! It really was a fun week but the best part of the whole week was when Christmas Eve finally got here…and for the boys, it didn’t come nearly fast enough!

Working on the puzzle

On Christmas Eve it has been our tradition for the past 15 years to get together with the Moshers for dinner and to exchange gifts. The dinner is usually something simple like sandwiches and salads, but the best part of the evening is usually the gift exchange...even though it’s mostly for the kids. However, some of the rest of us exchange gifts too and my favorite part is the “sister’s exchange” that I do with all of my sister in laws because we always get some really fun gifts from each other. Unfortunately, one of the only people that doesn’t get a gift is Rod…so it’s no wonder that he doesn’t really like the gift exchange as much as the rest of us do!

Grandma and Grandpa Mosher

Connor with his gift from Grandma and Grandpa Mosher

Hayden with his gift

Sydney and Pam

Normally, Rod is ready to go home long before any of the rest of us are, but as soon as Connor opened his gift and realized that I wouldn't let him take it out of the package until we got home, he was ready to go...and he wouldn't let us forget it until we finally gave in! We never stay too long at the Moshers anyway because we still have an hour drive ahead of us and a lot of Christmas day preparations that still need to be done, not to mention the fact that we all have a present at home waiting to be opened. That one present is usually a pair of pajamas and although it’s nothing too exciting…we all love having new jammies! The very best part of all though, is that Christmas day is only a few hours away and the boys can hardly contain their excitement knowing that Santa will soon be here…and that alone is what truly makes Christmas so much fun!

Jon and Brittney like their new "jammies"

We even gave Kaydee a gift

Posing in our jammies as we get the camera set for our Christmas morning picture

HARK the Herald Angels Sing!

Hayden decided this year that he wanted to be in his school choir and since singing is something that I love and I want my boys to love too…I was thrilled when he asked me if he could! I gladly let him join the choir even though it meant having to get him to the school every Wednesday morning by 7:45, which proved to be quite a chore. I thought if I had him ride with some of the other kids that were going, it would make it easier, and it did, but we still managed to forget almost every week…until we heard the doorbell ring every Wednesday morning and realized that it was his ride to choir…and he wasn’t ready! I have to take the blame for most of it, but he wasn’t much better at remembering either.

Despite our forgetfulness, he still made it to every practice and loved every minute of it. Of course, we never could get him to sing anything for us at home because he’d conveniently “forget” how the songs went. This month however, we finally got to hear him perform at their Christmas concert…and it was so much fun to hear him sing! The choir performed some really hard songs and the kids did a remarkable job! It was definitely worth the stress!Hayden and his friend Joey Knight

BEAR in the Big BLUE Room!

As if just preparing for Christmas isn’t enough work, this year we decided to undergo the huge task of moving Hayden into the old computer room….just a few weeks before Christmas! What was I thinking? We had told him that we were going to move him way back when we remodeled the kitchen in March and April but we just hadn’t gotten around to it...until now! Part of the reason that we hadn’t done it earlier was because I had to clean the basement first, after it became the dumping ground for everything that I didn’t want to put back in my kitchen or laundry room and I hadn’t gotten around to that until the boys went back to school in September. Believe it or not, it took me until the end of November to get that all done but it’s only because I would limit my time downstairs to only 30 minutes a day because I didn’t want to get too overwhelmed.

All taped and ready to paint

Reassembling Hayden's bed in his new room

When the basement was finally clean (or close to it!), I said something to Rod about starting to move Hayden into his new room…and things just escalated from there! I began spending my “30 minute” time period every day cleaning that room and by the first of December we were ready to start making it Hayden’s room. And by “making it Hayden’s room”, I mean painting it in whatever color he chose. I thought a nice medium shade of blue would look good, but when I brought the paint sample home to show Hayden, he decided that he liked the darker blue better…and since it was his room, I let him decide. When we started to paint, Rod and I both said more than once “that’s definitely blue!” but it was too late to back out then.

It's really blue isn't it?

The finished room

It took us until about mid-December before we got Hayden completely moved into his new room, but in the move, we left all of the junk behind in his old room...which was now Connor’s room! I wasn’t going to even work on his room until after Christmas and I told him as much, but after I took one look at it after Hayden was moved out, it looked like a tornado had hit! Needless to say, I didn’t have any choice but to clean it and repaint it.

Did a tornado hit here?

I’m sure Connor felt a little deprived because I didn’t give him a choice in paint color because we had some of the old stuff left and we were just going to retouch the bad spots on the wall. Unfortunately, the “old paint” was almost 9 years old and when we started painting with it we soon realized that it wasn’t quite the same shade of blue that it had been 9 years before...so we’ll probably have to repaint after all, but that for sure isn’t going to happen until after Christmas. In the meantime, I’m just trying to get used to the idea that “my babies” are growing up and they really needed to have rooms of their own. It probably should have happened a long time ago because we have 6 rooms in our house and we were only using 2 of them as bedrooms, but it was good for them to learn how to share. Hopefully they won’t forget it!Connor in his "almost" finished room - at least it's mostly clean