Happy New Year! || Christmas + Hanukkah Recap || 2016

First and foremost, HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

Hope everyone had a happy and safe New Year's Eve and New Year's Day! We spent both doing pretty regular weekend stuff like taking a trip to Costco and then doing some laundry and being lazy around the house. Although maybe slightly boring, it was much needed and appreciated considering all the activities that went down last weekend.

I unintentionally took more than a week off blogging minus The Guys Behind the Blog post last week and while it was nice to unplug for a while (I didn't even touch my computer for four straight days - it was amazing), there's so much I want to share that I'm going to play a little catch up today. 2017 is going to bring some changes to the blog, but more on that later. For now, a little holiday recap.

December 24th, 25th, and 26th were a bit crazy for us since Christmas and Hanukkah fully over lapped this year. We spent the 24th celebrating Christmas with my brother in law's family (who we're very close with and are basically like blood family even though they technically are not). We spent the 25th celebrating with Seth's direct family. And we spent the 26th celebrating Hanukkah. It was a whirlwind three days and I'm pretty sure Mason got so used to opening presents that he thought every morning for the following few days that there should be more presents. Coming down off the holiday high is a bit depressing.

This post is going to be relatively picture heavy because really, that's the best way to share a holiday recap. I'm not going to share all the pictures because 1) you'd be scrolling through pictures for about an hour and 2) I'm not sure how everyone feels about their kids pictures on the internet. SO, without further ado...

Prepping desserts for the big day...

And baking fresh cookies for Santa!

December 24th - Christmas Eve

Seth spent the morning out with the boys seeing the new Star Wars movie, Rogue One. Mason and I spent the morning baking some muffins for dinner at my sister in law's and brother in law's and then made our way over to their house a bit earlier than everyone to start the party early. Christmas Eve is spent celebrating with my brother in law's side of the family and this year Seth's cousins came in from Arizona to celebrate with us so it was an extra big group of family, including nine kids (soon to be one more later this month!). It was insanely crazy and loud, but amazing and wonderful all at the same time.

We got home late that night, Mason put out cookies and milk for Santa, and Seth and I played Santa and ate the cookies and milk (Seth) and put together toys (me).

Making corn muffins to bring for dinner.

Appetizers.

Dessert table.

TONS of presents for the nine kids!

Mason insisted on TWO cookies for Santa and TEN carrots for the reindeer.

December 25th - Christmas

We spent the early morning hours of Christmas morning as our little family of three opening our gifts for each other. The majority of the gifts were for Mason, minus some stocking gifts for Seth and I, because we each got some larger gifts that we got earlier in the month. (Seth got a bed liner and a Tonno Cover for his new truck and I got the iPhone 7+ that I had been wanting so much!) After we finished opening up our gifts, we headed over to Seth's mom's house for breakfast around 9:30am and ended up staying and playing until around 3pm when we headed home for showers and to change in order to be back for dinner at 5pm. It was a relaxed yet busy and chaotic day filled with love, gifts, and tons of family... oh and MORE food!

Some fun Hanukkah hats that Seth's aunt and uncle had.

Nanny love.

The BIGGEST hug!

December 26th - Hanukkah

I was originally supposed to work on the 26th, but only because I wanted to. It's a crazy busy time at work and I thought I needed to go in to process some payments, but I was going to be the only one there and so I decided to take an additional day off. I paid for it the rest of the week, but I worked late, and got it all done, and that's all that my bosses really care about. It's all about give and take!

I'm so, SO happy that my work is so flexible because I got to spend the extra day with our out of town family going ice skating (Mason's first time!) and going to see Sing. We then headed back to my sister in law's house and celebrated Hanukkah with MORE presents and of course, MORE eating!

It was a whirlwind weekend filled with lots of presents and lots of eating and lots of family and was just perfect. It was crazy and chaotic at the time, but I wouldn't have it any other way and I'm already looking forward to next year!

And with that, it's officially back to reality and back to our normal schedule -- I'm off to work today, Mason is back to regular school, and lucky Seth is off work officially celebrating the holiday and hopefully watching the Rose Parade for all three of us.

Happy Holidays and Happy New Year!

Merry Christmas!

I know that today is not technically Christmas or Christmas Eve, but this is my last post for the week. I can't say that I'm totally signing off because you know you can find me overgramming over on Instagram, but as my last blog post for the week, I wanted to share our Christmas card. By now, everyone should definitely have them, so I feel confident that I won't be spoiling anything by sharing today.

So, without further ado, our Christmas card for 2015!

I'm not sure if I've mentioned on the blog before, but we always choose to say "Happy Holidays" instead of Merry Christmas. We have family that celebrates Hanukkah as well as family that celebrates Christmas and while I don't think either side would be offended with a card with the saying of one way or another, we just prefer to make it "holiday neutral", if you will, and say Happy Holidays.

the front

the back

I have to say, I LOVE how they turned out! LOVE. The picture. The design. Everything. I think I may have found my new Christmas card company of choice - Minted. I already raved about Minted in this post, so I won't go into it again here, but seriously, every time I look at our cards, I fall in love even more.

And with that, Merry Christmas Eve Eve! Hope you have the best rest of the week and weekend with your friends, families, and loved ones! Merry Christmas!

[Weekending] Hot Wheels, the Christmas Train, and Hanukkah!

What do all of these things have in common? Essentially nothing, except for the fact that they happened to be all the things we did this weekend! Well, I should re-phrase... this LONG weekend!

The weekend started for me on Friday when I took the day off work (have I ever told you how amazing it is to be able to take days off when I want? I have. Oh yeah. Well it's still THAT amazing!) to meet Desiree and Marcus at the Discovery Cube for the Hot Wheels exhibit. They had been once before and told us how awesome it was and they sure were right! We actually ended up buying a membership when we went on Friday (it was Seth's Grandma's gift to Mason for Hanukkah) and I'm so excited to be able to use it more in the coming year. But for this trip, we planned to see the Hot Wheels exhibit.

I didn't know how "into it" Mason would be as museums haven't really been his strong suit in the past. He more prefers to run around rather than actually play with the exhibit. But this? HE LOVED.

regular car tire vs a race car tire

the actual Hot Wheels race car

so many fun tracks set up to play with!

the boys favorite thing! they loved setting up the cars and then letting them race down the track

my favorite thing! you got to be a pit crew member and change the tires

Seriously the boys played for almost TWO hours just in this exhibit alone. We had to convince them to leave when it started to get busy so we could go explore the rest of the museum. We ended up exploring for about an hour more and then we left to come home, have lunch, and take a nap. I LOVE how well the boys get along and how much they love playing with each other. Mason and I seriously had the BEST afternoon with Desiree and Marcus and I'm so glad we were able to meet up with them!

Saturday morning, we dropped Mason off at school and ran a ton of errands. Since we had to work the weekend before we had trips to Costco and Target planned as well as some last minute Christmas shopping. We picked Mason up at 2pm, put him down for a quick nap, and then met Desiree, Scott, Marcus and Julia for dinner at Lazy Dog Cafe. I love that we met through blogging last year and we get along so well, our kids get along, and so do our husbands! The only thing that would be more perfect would be if we lived slightly closer, but hey, I'm not complaining, we got to hang out two times in one weekend!

After dinner, we went to the Christmas train. This is one of my very favorite things about Christmas. We went with the Macke's last year and I'm so glad we got to go again! Also, we picked the perfect day because even though it was SO COLD (for California standards), it rained on Friday night and Sunday night so we were glad it was only cold!

We walked up, checked out some of the lights on the exterior, picked up our train tickets at will call, and got in line for the train. The line was a little longer than last year since we didn't arrive right at our designated time of 6pm, but the boys did really great waiting for the train.

And as you can tell, someone was super excited when it was finally our turn to get on!

We hopped on the train, enjoyed the lights, and were on our way to Santa where Mason... rocked it again! I don't know what happened, but this is the year for Santa!

After meeting Santa, we waited for the train to come back and we headed back to the train depot and the area where the games were. But not before traveling through the tunnel of lights!

After we got dropped off by the train, we entered Santa's Village to play some games and check out the rest of the lights.

ice fishing

picture coloring

Mason thought it was one of those cardboard cut outs to put his head through!

                     

We had the very best night with the Macke's and can't wait to do it again next year!

Sunday morning we slept in, ran some errands, and were lazy around the house until Sunday night when we went over to my brother-in-law and sister-in-law's house to celebrate Hanukkah. The food was delicious. The company was great. And the kids were SO spoiled!! There were also some AMAZING dance parties which I was able to capture on video. Let's just say, Mason has some moves!

Thankfully it's already Wednesday of this week and we are halfway to another fun filled weekend! December has been crazy busy, but so, so fun!