Christmas 2013 - Part One

Ahhhhh....Christmas.  My favorite time of the year.  This year our Christmas was a little different.  In the past, Matt and I are pretty adamant that Christmas morning is JUST our little family of 5.  The season can bring so much busy-ness and time shared with others - which Matt and I love - but we like to bring Christmas morning back to just our little family.

Just us.  

Enjoying the company of eachother.

However, this Christmas my whole family was going to go to Breckenridge, Colorado.  They asked Matt and I (along with the kiddos) to join them.  When we said we would fly out on the 26th (after we had our quiet family Christmas morning on the 25th) my sis asked to talk to me.

She explained that since she and her husband would not be having any children, they wanted ONE year where they could experience what it is like to have a Christmas morning with children.  ONE year where they could experience the giggles and the shrieks and the pure chaos of laughter and love as children so often provide on Christmas morning.

After some discussions....Matt and I agreed to fly out to Colorado for Christmas.

This posed just a little problem though.  We arranged for Santa to visit Colorado (Santa usually brings 2-or 3 gifts for each child).....but there was no way I was going to ship all of our gifts for our children out there too.  Soooo, we decided to have OUR Christmas (with the gifts we purchased the children) the day before we left for Colorado.  This would still allow my sister and her husband to experience Christmas with children (and they would be getting plenty of gifts there between Santa, Aunts/Uncles, and Grandparents) but would save us a lot of money on shipping gifts.

The night of OUR Christmas Eve we tried our best to make it feel like the real Christmas Eve.  We made a special dinner.  We let the kiddos sleep in our room.   And before bed we snuggled up in jammies with blankets and warm drinks in hand to go look at Christmas lights.  Such fun times.

And that night I got everything ready, just like I would be doing on the real Christmas Eve....

The next morning they were up bright and early for the fun to begin....

We spent the rest of the day playing and having fun with our children....and preparing for our trip to Colorado the next morning.  Little did we know what kind of fun would be in store for us!  

Stay tuned for the next part of our Christmas story of 2013!

"One of the most glorious messes in the whole world is the mess created in the living room on Christmas Day....don't clean it up too quickly"

--Andy Rooney