Christmas with Grandma Joyce and Uncle Zeb

We celebrated Christmas with my mom and brother today.  Mom had the entire day off so we went to the Das Essen Haus for dinner and then back to mom's house to spend time together and open presents.  It was a great family Christmas!

These are the stockings that we had growing up.  Mom had to add a couple for Austin and Hadley.  I forgot to get pictures with the presents under the tree and the stocking stuffers in the stockings.  Whoops!  Anyways, I think my mom has an awesome yet simple Christmas tree.  Just look at that thing...straight out of Macy's if you ask me!

We bought mom a Kindle for Christmas and she loves it!

You know how I love to throw parties...I can't wait for the warm weather so we can have people over to the house and I can use my new server.

Hadley got a "tar", as she calls it, for Christmas.  She played music and sang for all of us.  It was super cute!

Christmas Day at Grandma and Grandpa Reames

I had to work today, but Austin and Hadley headed up to Grandpa and Grandma Reames house to celebrate Christmas day with his family.  Austin took some pictures for me and filled me in on how the day went.  Grandma made her traditional Christmas dinner and then everyone opened presents and enjoyed each other's company.  Hadley had a great time getting to play with Ryder and Aunt Shelby! 

Below is the Allis Chalmers clock that we bought for Grandpa.  We were sure that Grandpa would like it and he absolutely did!

Hadley got a large present from Grandpa and Grandma.  She was excited to open it up and see what it was.

Yay!  It's a book shelf to match the toy box that Grandpa made for her last year.  Austin made sure that Grandpa signed the bottom so that Hadley will have it when she gets big. 

Check out the little giggle boxes below!  How cute are they?

Austin caught this million dollar shot of Ryder all wrapped up in the wrapping paper.  Too cute!

Merry Christmas!

A Wise family Christmas Eve

This year we celebrated Christmas Eve at my sister Melissa's house.  She made dinner for everyone and it was quite tasty.  After dinner we didn't waste any time opening presents.  It's hard to put that off when there are kids in the house.  It was nice to spend time together.  I love having my siblings and enjoy spending time with them more than anything else!

The kids anxiously awaiting opening presents...

And so it begins...

Uncle Zeb helped Hadley get her doll house pieces out of the package...

Dad passed out the gifts with the help of Gabe.

Hadley being a goof ball...

...and cheesing for the camera!

My best gift this Christmas was the Keurig we bought for my step-mom Karen.  When I saw it, I thought it was the prefect gift for her.  I love to get gifts that people will really love and I think she loved this!

Aunt Melissa got Julianna a musical instrument set and dad got them the rocking horses.  The girls decided to have a band on their horses.  Cute at first, but then we all wanted to kill Melissa over the loudness!

What a great Christmas Eve spent with family!

    

An early Christmas morning

Despite it being Christmas morning, Hadley still slept in until her regular 10:30 a.m. time this morning.  When Austin brought her upstairs, she was very excited to see that Santa Clause came to our house last night! 

She was even more excited to see that Santa ate all of the cookies and drank the pop that we left out for him last night.  We showed her the crumbs that the reindeer must have left too.

She was pretty excited to see in her stocking...

...and then onto presents!

Oh my!

Hadley loves Dora the Explorer and I love her cheesy grins!

Hadley helped daddy open his presents.

Hadley helped mommy open her presents too!

When present opening was done, it was onto putting all the toys together and playing...

Her most favorite toy of all was the trampoline.  Hadley loves to jump.  She always runs up and grabs our hands saying, "let's jump."  We're hoping that this will give us a break and be a little easier on her knees and the floor!

Merry Christmas!

An early Christmas Eve

I have to work on Christmas Day, so we decided to celebrate Christmas Eve one day early. I didn't want to miss the excitement on Hadley's face when she came up stairs in the morning to see what Santa brought her. It's so much fun this year because we've been talking to her about Santa for the last month and reading lots of books and she's old enough to "believe"!

Hadley and I baked chocolate chip and white macadamia nut cookies for Santa. We also left him a glass of Pepsi. It looks like he liked it and shared with his reindeer too. Check out the crumbs!

When we were trying to get Hadley to go to bed, she went over and sat in the chair instead of heading downstairs.  We asked her what she was doing and she said, "I want to see him."  We told her that she couldn't see Santa tonight and she had to go to bed.  She then said, "I already saw him?" (meaning at the mall)  We told her "Yes you did already see him, but he's so busy on Christmas Eve that he meets the kids early to get their wish lists.  He's very busy because he has to deliver all of the toys to all the kids in the world."  She agreed and downstairs we headed for bed.  She was out like a light!