An Official Birthday, More Murray and Christmas Cheer

Paige's birthday weekend brought family from near and far. Nana Ann, Aunt Katie and Aunt Kim flew in on Friday from Wisconsin. Also joining us for the celebration was Grandma Vicki from Gulf Breeze and Nana and Poppy from just across town. All were a huge help with everything from set up to clean up and, most importantly, to be there for Paigey on her big day.

From one party to the next. After Paige's birthday, we cleaned up and ordered pizza, got the kids ready for bed and headed out for Ben's office Christmas party. When we returned home, we learned that Jack had spiked a fever, which would last until Tuesday.

Sunday, we all went to The Tallahassee Ballet's Nutcracker. Murray brought the kids this Topsy Turvy Nutcracker doll. They got a kick out of it, but Jack wanted to know where the Mouse King was.

Jack and Logan excited for the Nutcracker. Unfortunately, we forgot to bring more medicine for Jack and his fever spiked again, so at intermission he and Dad headed back home. At least he got to see is favorite part, The Battle Scene.

It's a great time of year to have our faraway family, because we get to take the time to also celebrate Christmas with them. On Sunday, after the Nutcracker we exchanged gifts with Nana Ann and Aunt Katie {sadly Kim flew back to Wisconsin earlier that morning}. The gifts were a huge hit, as is evident by the kids stripping off their clothes to change into new duds and prancing {uh, dancing} around.

Monday {the 19th} was Paige's official birthday and the gifts just kept coming. Paige woke up to a new doll high chair and cradle {all set up with her Bitty Baby and accessories ready for play}.

Apparently we needed to explain that this was a new bed for the doll!

That night we enjoyed a quiet, little family celebration with a small cake and singing and a few minor mishaps.

Note that Jack still wasn't feeling festive enough to join the singing - he just laid on the couch pitifully. Afterwards, we opened more gifts from Aunt Unell that arrived earlier that day and Paige proudly sported the goods.

Jack was finally well again by Wednesday and was able to attend pajama day at school, where they drank hot chocolate and watched The Polar Express. While he was out, Jack practiced his writing with his first letter to Santa. I had to have him dictate it to me, but it says, "Dear Santa, A Lego Ninjas of the Caribbean." Which I think translates into him asking Santa for, Lego Ninjagos and Pirates of the Caribbean.

Meanwhile, Murray Christmas continued spreading holiday cheer around the house. Here are a few more photos of the Tom-foolery.

Drawing red noses on the kids while they sleep and bringing a singing Rudolph to the kids {which Paige loves}.

Hanging around in the fan.

Raiding underwear drawers and hanging them in place of stockings.

Making snow angels out of flour

He's got guilty written all over him!

The kids sure have missed Murray since he flew back to the North Pole on Christmas Eve. We look forward to his return again next year!

Paigey had a great last few days of the year at school. On Friday before her birthday, it was her turn for pajama day and one of several visits with Santa this season, whom she rarely wanted anything to do with.

That next Wednesday was the last day of school and it was Jesus' birthday celebration. Shockingly, as soon as Santa entered the room, she got right off my lap, marched up to him and hugged him.

Ms. Julie {who is a party entertainer/clown in her spare time} painted all of the kids' faces.

During the program, they called up all of the December babies to the stage and sang happy birthday to them, followed by another rendition for Jesus. Paige raced to the stage and climbed right on to Santa's lap. I guess after several unsuccessful attempts, she finally decided Santa was an okay guy!

They sang a few holiday songs, but since Paige was on Santa's lap, she actually ended up being obstructed by the kids standing in front. She was also, apparently more enamored with the girl next to her than she was interested in singing. We get plenty of her singing at home though. Her favorite holiday song was Away in a Manger and has since worked it's way into the laundry list of song requests at bedtime.

Early that week, I was busy baking up some Buttery Pound Cake with Nutella Swirl {from my new Coton Colors cookbook - thank you, Nancy} and crafting for Jack and Paige's teachers. By midweek, I was entrenched in the kitchen baking up some holiday cheer for Ben's office staff. Besides the 3 mini loaves and one large loaf of Nutella pound cake, I made 15 mini loaves of banana bread {a Nancy recipe that is probably the best banana bread I've ever had...moist in the middle with a crunchy outer crust and it's SO easy} and 15 jars of cinnamon honey butter. The cinnamon honey butter recipe, came from Darby's blog and makes a great holiday gift for friends and coworkers, especially when packaged with something yummy to eat it on. Plus, it's so easy, you can make some and keep in your fridge for yourself {which I've been known to do}. In Darby's words, "… if you use any recipe from this blog let it be this ONE!" So I did, and boy was I glad that I had enough for one more jar to keep for myself.

Lots of holiday cheer in this box!

The remainder of the week saw me running around with two kids in tow trying to finish up Christmas shopping, frantically wrapping presents, dinners with friends and baking up more desserts.

Which finally brings us to Christmas Eve! Christmas Eve was spent at my parent's house. We had intended to go to the usual 5 p.m. family Christmas Eve service, but when Paige woke up from her nap at 4, she was on fire and appeared to have the same fever that Jack had the week prior. All I could think was that Christmas was ruined! We dosed her up with ibuprofen and leisurely headed to my parent's house to have dinner and celebrate with my brother and his family. It was a relaxing evening, especially considering we have 6 children {and one on the way} between the two families.

The relaxing dinner, was followed by a stressful night spending hours on end assembling "Santa" gifts. It's fuzzy to remember, but I'm pretty certain that insults were flying and blame was rampant on both parties. After two hours of assembling Paige's kitchen, we started on Jack's scooter. We struggled to get the parts in the right order and put the first of the pieces in place. Which, only resorted to a hammer being taken to the scooter. Later, when we tried screwing it together, we found that the hammering had misaligned the screw threads and that it was possible that this scooter would never get together. That's about the time that I thought {again} Christmas is ruined! What really upset me was that earlier that day, I returned a perfectly good, perfectly easy to put together light up Razor scooter to Target {knowing that we had the much cooler three-wheeled Trikke scooter for Jack}. Why, oh why did I rush to return that stupid scooter? Besides learning the lesson of not waiting until the night before to assemble everything and not ordering everything online, I also learned to over buy in case one of the gifts goes awry...you'll always have a back-up gift! Luckily, we had a very cool Playmobil pirate ship for Jack and hopefully he wouldn't notice that he got a new helmet, but no scooter! We finished up stuffing stockings and laying out Santa gifts, then headed to bed. It wasn't a few hours later that Ben awoke and told me that we needed to check on Paige. Ugh. Perfectly good sleep interrupted. I struggled to get back to that good sleep the rest of the night.

I was too excited so I woke up around 5 am, dosed Paige up with more medicine and tried to head back to bed. Unsuccessful, I finally rose at 6:30, made a cup of coffee and waited for the kids to wake up, while gazing at our new iPad a family gift from "Santa". Jack got up around 7:45, so I woke up Paige and we came down to see what Santa had left for the kids.

It was a long day and I was beat by 10:30 am! We still had Christmas dinner to prepare. But once all of that was done and cleaned up. Ben and I both fell asleep on the couch around 9:30.

The kids were spoiled with tons of gifts, but they were both so sweet and grateful and truly happy with everything they got. Jack has thanked me several times and just snuggled up to me today and told me that he had a great Christmas. Each year, it gets more and more fun with these two. Truly it is such a joy to watch my kids excitement and relive my own childhood through their eyes.

To this day, they are the best gifts I've ever received!