California Christmas

My brother David came to California for Christmas this year.  On Christmas eve we had Paul's family and Poppy over for dinner and ornament making.

We made photo block ornaments and Garrett painted an airplane.

I made a traditional turkey dinner.  Except that I bought an already cooked turkey and ham from Honey Baked Ham and that was the part I was stressed about so I just did all the easy stuff.

We made reindeer food to sprinkle on the grass.  Garrett took it very seriously because the reindeer need to eat too.

Oats and sugar sprinkles.

Checking out the tree before opening our new pajamas and heading to bed.

Christmas jammies!

The living room when Santa was almost done.

  A friend told us a few weeks ago that there are 3 phases in a man's life:
-When he believes in Santa
-When he doesn't believe in Santa
-When he is Santa

It was fun for us this year because Garrett was so excited and Addie follows in his every footstep so she was enjoying it, too.  Having said that, Paul and I sat and looked at it all before going to bed and talked about how overwhelming it is to look at, and that I couldn't help but think about the parents who were sitting in an empty living room wondering how they'd explain to their kids the next morning why Santa didn't come.  We have a few different ideas for next year.

Good morning, kids!

Pre-breakfast treat.

After breakfast we headed to the in-laws for more gifts, hanging out, and dinner.

Playing with remote control cars.  Disneyland has this shop kind of like build a bear, but its for building your own remote control Cars cars.  My mother in law built them.  They are so cool.  I'll have to take a close up of the 3 we got.  Garrett had so much fun.

It wouldn't be Christmas without a game of Doody Head.

 We ended the night with our 4th year in a row, late night run to Denny's.  It was a good Christmas.  But I guess it really ended with putting the kids to bed late, trying to make a path through the mess, and beginning to pack for our trip to Utah the next morning.