Christmas Happenings!

During December we did some fun crafts!  The boys did this cute Christmas tree craft, and because JM is older, I labeled his with numbers and had him glue them in order.

Doesn't Noah look happy to finish his tree?!

Matthew and JM had a choir concert with all the other kiddos for a Sunday night singing in the chapel.

They did just great and had a fun cupcake afterwards to celebrate!

And for fun, Noah in his Christmas best!

JM was a shepherd in his school Christmas pageant.  He did so good with his little hook.  All the kids look so cute!

Here he is having a little too much fun with his shepherd's hook!

We had a LOT of fun in December.  I hope I can get around to blogging about all of it.  It was a great month to celebrate Jesus!`

A "Picture" Perfect Christmas

It is SO hard to get a picture of ALL 3 boys smiling and looking at the camer at once.  One Sunday after church all the stars aligned and the boys sat by their Christmas tree and actually smiled for pictures!

Not quite there...

GOLD!  I believe it's the best picture of ALL 3 ever taken by us...ever.  I am SO in love with this picture!

Silly boys!

I am so glad they sat down and smiled for me!  It's a Christmas miracle!

All Aboard the Polar Express!

The boys LOVE The Polar Express!  We went on a fun Polar Express train last year.  This year we didn't go to the Polar Express so I decided to throw a Polar Express party for our friends!  We are fortunate to have a neighborhood club house we can have birthday parties and events like this!  There's no way we could fit this many families in our house, but at the clubhouse, there's plenty of room!

Here's Matthew getting his ticket!  The kids turned in their tickets before they left to get a bell off of the little tree on the table.  I put down tape to make a train track from the front door to the room.  Jordan downloaded the Polar Express music for me and we had that going as you walked in the door.  My friend, Tracy, loaned me this red board and some other fun Polar Express items!

The kids did a waffle cone/Christmas tree craft.  They decorated their cone with lots of differnt candies.  It was a lot of fun!

I had (fake) candles and bells everywhere.  I love how Matthew is about to jump off the back of the couch in this picture.

I served pepermint sugar cookies and hot cocoa cookies.  Kacy brought coconut cookies too!  We had hot chocolate and all kinds of fun marshmallows.  Berkli  brought a veggie and meat tray as well!  I had cut out little Polar Express art from Etsy onto each red cup.

I'm pretty sure Matthew had a great time eating ALL of the candy.  Goodness!

All the kids did a great job with their Christmas trees!

Miss Elizabeth came early and helped me make hot chocolate and she also read "The Polar Express" to the kids!  She was a good sport to put up with so many crazy kids running around!

And we had a big surprise!  Santa made a surprise appearance!  He gave out little candy canes and each little boy or girl (that wanted to) got to sit with him a bit!

It was the most fun Christmas party!  We had a blast and the kids had a great time too!  We'll have to do it again next year.  Thanks to all of our friends for coming!

A Visit To Santa

 The boys were very excited to go see Santa!  We knew John Michael wanted to talk to him, and we knew that Matthew wouldn't talk to him, and we knew Noah wouldn't go near him!

We watched a little bit of Polar Express before it was time to go!  Can you tell Noah knows how to say "cheeeese!" whenever there's a camera around?

They did a good job talking to Santa.  John Michael told him he wanted a white bike and a pop gun and we got Matthew to lean over and tell Santa he also wanted a pop gun.

Everyone got a chocolate square afterwards so everyone was happy.

We attempted to go look around the Promenade after this but a certain child had a complete and total meltdown and lost his mind, so we were forced to leave.  No fun but totally necessary, unfortunately!  Ho Ho Ho!

Christmas Menu Planning

Yesterday we took a MUCH needed day of doing nothing but staying in PJs and watching Christmas movies and well, just doing nothing!  I made homemade biscuits for breakfast with scrambled eggs and chocolate gravy!  Hello Christmas Break!

All 3 boys slept for nap yesterday, so I decided to do my Christmas menu plan so I thought I'd share!

Last year we had the ham steak the way my mom makes it, gren beans and twice stuffed potatoes.

It looks like this year I'm not very creative, as my menu plan basically looks exactly the same for Christmas dinner!

 Christmas Dinner :

Crockpot ham (I've never made it like this, we'll see that happens!)

Sweet n Sour green beans from Southern Plate ( I plan to make these the day before)

Baked potato casserole (A Pinterest recipe)

frozen cranberry banana salad in individual muffin liners that I can make and freeze this weekend. Also, another Southern Plate recipe

Rolls

And my mother in law will be bringing about 4,000 desserts from Alabama that day! I wanted to make a coconut cake if she hadn't been bringing desserts for us!

Christmas Eve Dinner

We decided that we are going to brave the Christmas Eve service at church with all 3 kids, so I want an easy meal I can put on a plate right when we get home from the service.  I'll put this "Mississippi Roast" (or Man gettin' roast as I like to call it) in the crock pot all during the day and we'll have it when we get in from church.  I'm going to add potatoes and carrots before we leave for church.  We need fast and easy on Christmas Eve! I'm going to devote a whole blog post to the wonders of this roast.  It's insane and great and easy!

Christmas Morning :

make ahead sausage casserole

pigs n a blanket

monkey bread

Orange Juice

and peppermint hot chocolate

I wanted to try and prep my monkey bread the night before by cutting the biscuits into pieces and mixing the sugar and cinnamon in a large ziploc and then just dumping it all in the bundt pan early the next morning.  I'll try it and see how it goes!

No matter what we eat, we'll all be together and that's what really counts on Christmas!