Christmas 2011

Am I the only one that feels like Christmas takes forever to get here, and then it is over so quickly?  We had a fantastic Christmas holiday this year, and I was really sad to see it go.  We did some really fun things this year, and tried to start some family traditions.

Logan has loved attending his preschool program at one of the local high schools.  The high school teachers have been great with all the little preschoolers, so I wanted to make something to show our appreciation.  After talking to my friend Jessika, I decided on making red velvet cupcakes with white chocolate, peppermint, cream cheese frosting.  They were a lot of fun to make and I think they will be added to our annual traditions list.

Have you all become addicted to Pinterest?  I try to use it solely to keep track of ideas that I find and want to remember, because I know that if I spent any kind of time on it I would probably be sucked in. Anyway, I saw the idea for these cute pictures on a friend's board and I thought Lincoln would be pretty cute dressed up like Santa's littlest helper.

One tradition that I love is getting together on Christmas Eve and reading Luke chapter 2.  The kids love dressing up.

Lincoln was our little Shepherd this year.

He was a good Shepherd and made sure that none of his sheep got away from him.

Logan made a great Joseph.

Bella quickly agreed to be Mary when she found out she got to carry around a baby, but she refused to wear any kind of costume.

Next we moved onto opening up our one Christmas Eve gift, which is always new pajamas.  Logan is going through this phase where as soon as he hears Lincoln has woken up from his nap (typically around 5:00) he asks if he can put his pajamas on.  It was so hard to keep telling him no every five minutes on Christmas Eve, because I knew he had some waiting for him under the tree.

My silly boys.

Our pretty princess.

Next we put our cookies out for Santa, and threw reindeer food out on the front yard.

We put our Magic Santa Key on the front door since we don't have a chimney.  Logan was very concerned about how Santa was going to get into our house since we didn't have a chimney.

Christmas Morning

Lincoln trying out his new harmonica.

'Santa' was good to the Burnett kids this year and sent them a train table.  I think we are going to get lots of use out of it during the winter months.

Whenever we asked Logan what he wanted for Christmas it was always a train, so he was ecstatic to say the least.

When we would ask Bella what she wanted Santa to bring her she would always tell us "Candy canes!"  How sweet is that!  It was no surprise that her stocking was filled with candy canes.

The Christmas Aftermath

Jeff's Christmas presents.  I made him a Car Shirt.  If you don't know what they are you have to check out the tutorial here.  I think it was a super cute gift, and I think the kids will also have a lot of fun with it.

The next gift I gave him were two sets of cuff links.  My friend Lechelle asked me if I was interested in making Jeff some for Christmas, and I quickly exclaimed, "YES!"  They were so fun, and super easy to make. 

This is the last gift that I made Jeff for Christmas.  It was a deck of cards that I got for .50 cents.  Our printer hasn't been working, so I made everything by hand instead of printing them out.  At first I thought it would look a little cheesy, but now I kind of like it because every detail came from me to him.

Here are a few random pages from the deck.

My dad sent me a really cute hat for Christmas, that I can't wait to wear once the weather gets a little cooler.

For breakfast we had our traditional cinnamon rolls and hot chocolate.  With Christmas being on a Sunday this year it was actually very enjoyable to be able to head off to church in the morning, and listen to messages about Christ.  Our church didn't start until 11:00 and it was only an hour, so the kids did well.

Here are a few snap shots of everyone in their Christmas outfits.

The weather has been unusually warm for this time of year, so the kids loved running around in their short sleeves.  Everyone told us that the winters here are miserable, but we have yet to experience the awfulness.

Once we got home the kids headed straight down to the basement, so they could play with all their new toys.  Jeff, Lincoln, and I all got a nap in.  Jeff said, "You know it's a good holiday when you have time to take a nap." 

Another new tradition that we started was making a cake and singing Happy Birthday to Jesus.  The kids really loved the idea, and I think it helped them remember why we celebrate Christmas.

I will have to remember to not put quite so much powder sugar on the cake next year. :)

Jeff made a comment to me saying, "I don't like celebrating Christmas, because it's that time of year when my wife makes me feel like a schmuck."  I asked him what in the world he was talking about.  He said he felt bad that he didn't get me anything for Christmas.

Honestly all I have to do is look at the picture below, and know that there is nothing in the world that he could give me that would be better than what I already have.

I LOVE CHRISTMAS!