I hope you and your family had a great Christmas. I got so caught up in not stressing out that I didn’t blog for over a month. But don’t go thinking I was sitting around eating peppermint bonbons all day. Oh no, there were lots of Christmas festivities.

Graham was a shepherd in the Grandparent’s Day Christmas play at school. I thought his costume was adorable, but I guess he didn’t. He asked if he could dress up like a wise man for Halloween next year.

What a Christmas Play boy.

Wells was in “A Play in a Manger” at Church. He had a speaking part, and we were very proud of him.

We decked our halls.

The children were not impressed with our outdoor lights or lack of inflatables. I dug out the silver tinsel tree that my parents bought me when I was in college and put it in the playroom window. I took them outside for the big reveal, and Wells said he liked it, but the neighborhood pool still had more lights than us.

We got our tree the Saturday after Thanksgiving. It stopped taking water two days after that. We finally got it decorated on day seventeen. It was officially a CRISPmas tree at that point.

I’m not complaining though. My friend Roxanne’s tree fell four times. FOUR. And a snake crawled out of my friend Susan’s tree. A SNAKE. IN HER TREE. THAT SHE BOUGHT FROM THE SAME LOT AS US.

We celebrated Nan and Lily’s birthdays with a trip to the Laurel Christmas parade and a little antiquing. (If you ever have a chance to attend the Laurel parade, do it. It is the best.)

(Not sure what they were talking about, but it looks like Wells miiiiight be on the naughty list.)

Lily let me do her hair for her 13th birthday party. If you know anything about thirteen year old girls and how particular they are, you understand how honored I was.

We cheered Kailey on at her cheerleading competition.

We did a little Christmas light looking.

And some Christmas cookie-ing.

The weekend before Christmas was our Louisiana family get together. We hung out in New Orleans the day before.

(Bloody Merry)

We stayed an extra day so SK, Wells and Mawmaw Sarah could go to the Saints game.

I told Graham we could do anything he wanted while they were gone, so we ended up on Bourbon Street.

We eventually made our way to the aquarium, and Graham declared our day the best ever.

I know you shouldn’t buy your kids gifts the weekend before Christmas, but he “reallllllly” needed the enormous stuffed shark. When she saw it, Mawmaw Sarah asked Graham if he wanted to go to college.

Speaking of gifts, we let the boys open one on Santa eve (which is actually Christmas Eve eve eve since test run Santa comes to our house). Wells loved his, but Graham was obviously expecting the hot tub.

Trust me G, I know what it is like to not get what you want for Christmas. (Cough. COUGH.)

He was over it just in time to leave out a little food for Santa’s reindeer and then listen to the Christmas story.

I hope your children didn’t watch Santa Hunters. Ours did, and then proceeded to booby trap our house. Wells really wanted to sleep in the living room, but we explained that early Santa don’t play that.

Every year they ask for at least one remote controlled contraption (that typically breaks by the end of the day). This year, it was a Roboraptor that is almost as creepy as our old friend remote controlled shark. It has a free roam mode and lurks all over the house. I sneaks up behind me while I’m eating, and I feel like those kids in the kitchen on Jurassic Park.

On Christmas Eve we travelled south and spent several days with our families.

(Let me be the first to say that we got our money’s worth out of those Christmas pjs and santa shirts.)

(Nan’s peanut butter balls… my favorite)

(Mawmaw’s pumpkin praline pie… my other favorite)

(So. Many. Pictures.)

It was a fun December, and I was sad to see it go. But not that tree or the family of snakes that I convinced myself were living in it.

Happy New Year!