Christmas.

I am not having the same "whew, we made it through another Christmas" emotions that a lot of other people seem to be having.  Instead, I feel like I'm mourning the loss of a good friend.  I'm SAD Christmas is over and the countdown is on for next year's celebrations.

Life is so much different with kids, and the excitement of holidays is no different.  Christmas had a totally different feeling this year... Jaxon played a huge role in this, but I was filled with such anticipation for the day.  Each morning before even asking for some juice, he asked me to turn the Christmas tree on.  Each day we talked about Jesus' birthday and we talked about opening presents.  And every night, the countdown to Christmas day drew closer.

We are so thankful to be living close enough to our families this year that we were able to celebrate with both of them.  I already recapped our weekend with my family... but I'll gladly say it again, we had a great time.  I love love love every face in these pictures.

Since we knew we'd be gone over the actual Christmas day, we celebrated a few days early with our boys.  "Christmas Eve" we wanted to go see Santa, but after hearing about the 2 hour wait, we saw him from afar instead.  We came home, read the story of Jesus' birth, and opened 1 gift... jammies and a Christmas book.

Our "Christmas morning" was an early one for myself... I was SO stinkin' excited, I was wide awake at 5am.  Are you kidding me?!  I was practically pacing our hallway waiting for the boys to wake up, and when they did, we were ready for them.  A train table (thank you, Craigslist) filled with new trains and tracks awaited Jaxon, and many smaller toys for Cohen.

We hoped to do stockings before the gifts, knowing full-well that if Jaxon saw his train table, nothing else would matter.  He took a peek at his stocking and right away saw the train table.  I will never ever forget that look on his face... thank the Lord we have it on video as well, in case I do.

After the train table, we somehow convinced him to come see what Santa had brought.  Jaxon was hardly interested, but the complete opposite for Cohen.

My husband... oh, my sweet sweet husband... surprised me with a Pandora bracelet.  I have been asking for one for the last couple years, and eventually stopped asking for one because I assumed it would never happen.  A nudge from my friend Andrea probably didn't hurt anything either... ha!

We took a present break, and paused to eat some homemade cinnamon rolls... my yearly Christmas tradition with my boys.  Seriously delicious.

Finally, we opened the remainder of the gifts.  I got the majority of them from Zulily when they ran a Melissa & Doug sale... over $100 worth of quality toys for less than $40.  Unfortunately by this point, Cohen was ready for his morning nap so he was a blubbering mess through the majority of it, and I forgot to take pictures.  But... here are our remains.

Later that day, we headed to Tyler's family's house to spend Christmas weekend with them.  Such an amazing 4 days full of relaxation, games, laughs, delicious cupcakes, afternoon naps, amazing meals, and plenty of gifts to make a person feel abundantly blessed.

All in all, an amazing and perfect Christmas season.