I was glad to close the Christmas chapter this year, as it felt a little harder to juggle it all than in years past. In actuality, it was a really, really wonderful Christmas, probably one of the best I can remember. (Multiples of us literally cried tears of joy Christmas morning. It was that good.) It was just hard-won, that's all.
But! I don't want to completely move on before documenting it, so even though I'm literally almost a month late, here we go! In this post, we'll just cover Christmas, and then the next post, in which I'll move on from there, will hopefully not be another month in the making.
In the week leading up to Christmas, I had a couple of last-minute sewing projects to tackle. First, I wanted to make the babies some Christmas jammies. Last year, I bought all the kids some really nice jammies from Lands End that were just absolutely perfect, and as I try to buy pajamas a bit oversized to start, they all miraculously still fit all the kids this year! (Rocco's were a little bit highwater, but that's actually a welcome sign that he's getting taller - he's remained kind of dormant for a while.) So all I needed was to get a couple of pairs for the babies, but when I went to order them, they'd been discontinued. So I found a bathrobe in the same pattern on clearance and decided to make my own.
At first, I thought I'd make little sleep sacks for them, but as that involved sewing in zippers and I am, at best, a wonkadonk seamstress, that sounded a bit outside of my ability. But I found a very simple, free sewing pattern online for baby pants, and I'm so glad that's the direction I went because A) they turned out absolutely adorable, and B) they were absolutely infuriating to make, so I'm glad they weren't more complicated. (Have I ever shared with you that I do not remember a single sewing project I've undertaken that didn't leave me muttering expletives under my breath? Sewing and swearing are just a couple letters different for a reason.)
I also made it a goal to sew the babies' stockings. All of our stockings are handmade, and I think I had planned to sew a baby stocking last year when I was pregnant, but this was the first time we didn't know the gender in advance so I decided to put it off until this year. Which is probably a good thing, since I ended up with TWO babies and would have still needed to pull out the sewing machine this year anyway.
Unfortunately, the stocking project didn't end up getting entirely finished. First of all, we no longer have a nearby craft store, so my fabric choices were limited to what I already had on hand. Digging scrap fabric out and making decisions took way longer than it should have. Also, I'd lost the handmade pattern I'd used for all the previous stockings, so I had to troubleshoot a new one. Lastly, the sewing machine was beginning to get the better of me and I was thisclose to burning the house down. So I got Knox's done late Christmas Eve night, and used an extra one that I'd made when Juni was a baby for Eulalie. There's always next year to finish a simple project that is now only three years in the making, right?
Anyway. Luckily, I didn't only spend Christmas Eve sewing and cussing. We also did some other fun stuff.
Christmas Eve breakfast is always one of the best meals of the year.
In the evening, we had a cheeseboard, then opened and donned Christmas jammies (yes, I wrapped them even though everyone knew they were just last years' repeats) and watched the Nativity Story, as we do every year. Then the kids all had a slumber party in the boys' bedroom, as they do every year. This was Oey's first year joining in, and she had a blast. They all actually slept pretty well, except when Atticus woke up barfing at 3:00 a.m., and then Juni started yelling at 4:00 a.m. because she lost her first tooth. Luckily, everyone went back to sleep easily and even slept late Christmas morning! Poor Atticus felt pretty miserable all through the day though.
When everyone got up the next morning, the first order of the day was opening stockings and seeing the babies in all their Christmas-jammied glory. (Almost without fail, babies and toddlers pee or poop on their jammies overnight on Christmas. It's a fixed law of the universe. So I learned long ago to not dress them in the cute stuff until the morning-of.)
My other set of twins.
Then we took a break to eat breakfast and build up our strength for the day ahead.
After breakfast, the kids opened their gifts from us. We do it a little differently each year, but this year they all got only one gift under the tree, but I tried really hard to pick something they would each really, really love. This is where the photos get so good!
Oey got a Bitty Baby
Juni got a ballet dress and ballet shoes. She started crying and yelled, "I've been waiting for this present my whole life!"
She was crying so hard. It was surprising how emotional she was! So of course I cried too.
Callista got a tea set that was mine when I was younger.
She also cried! We were all just a bunch of bawl babies.
Ope, Oey needed to take a second to nurse her new baby.
Atticus got a gun cleaning kit
The younger boys got vintage G. I. Joes and a bunch of their gear and clothing and guns and accessories inside of some ammo cans.
Penelope got Todd some Cuban cigars, and Atticus and I bought him a cigar case.
Lolo and Penelope each got some small furniture...
...to go in their "new" dollhouse. My great-grandpa built this for me when I was thirteen and I thought it was time to pass it down! (Please ignore my cluttery food room - the dollhouse was too big to put under the tree so we had to hide it in here.)
More crying. It was quite the emotional day!
After that, they played with their new things for a while until we ate lunch. I made my grandma's potato soup recipe, which was perfect.
After lunch, the babies were up from nap so they got to open all their presents.
The big boys were generous with their new things and Knox found himself wielding some kind of miniature artillery.
Then after the babies went back down, we all headed downstairs and the kids all opened their gifts from each other. This is quite the ordeal as it involves over a hundred presents!
Avatar, from Atticus
World War Z, from Penelope
Airsoft guns, from Atticus
Cowgirl boots, again from Atticus
(This was the first year Atticus had money from working a "big boy" job, and he really enjoyed buying gifts with his newly increased weath!)
After that, everyone played together and relaxed, and Todd smoked one of his new Cubans, until our fancy dinner of ham and cheesy potatoes and asparagus. (We didn't take photos because ham under overhead lighting after dark is just horrible.)
And that was our Christmas. Truly a gift in itself. I have had such a fun time going back through these photos just to post the blog... and I take back what I said. I'm not glad Christmas is over. TAKE ME BAAAAACK TO CHRISSSTMASSSS.
2 comments :
it really was a fun Christmas. it was a blur with everything going on, but taking a moment to sit back and reflect on it was a good reminder at just how good the blur was.
I looove that last pic!! 😍😍😭
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