Holiday Escape

In the middle of our quick Christmas Break trip, we spent a couple of days at a nearby resort.

We started the escape by leaving Nash happily napping at home with a sitter, and enjoying a special pool day with Blake.

He couldn't have been more thrilled about the ginormous pool, especially since his grandparents' pool was closed due to the lack of heating in the "winter."

After swimming our hearts out, we admired all of the cool features around the resort. 

Blake thought it might be appropriate to strike a triangle pose in front of the enormous Christmas tree.

My parents were awesome enough to take Blake home with them while Troy and I stayed overnight at the resort.

In the midst of all of the swirling holiday stress, it was so nice to have a little 24 hour escape.

And, I got to go out on a date with my handsome husband. We laughed, a lot. Especially at the teenage girls that were sitting next to us at the movie theater and getting completely wrapped up in the wing-dinger of a movie we chose.

Even though we were technically on a vacation trip together, I felt like I never saw Troy except for that little escape. It was much needed and much appreciated.

Ringing in the New

We came home just in time to spend New Year's Eve with Troy's family before they were whisked away to Hawaii again.

After a long drive home, and an even longer hotel pit stop where Nash decided to crawl on me the majority of the night instead of sleep, I could not have been more thrilled to come home to the best meal of the year.

We have a New Year's Eve fondue tradition that is out of this world amazing.

There are really no words to describe my enthusiasm for fancy cheese fondue.  What a great way to kick off 2012.

We also let the boys stay up late and enjoy another round of Christmas. Again, not a bad way to ring in the new.

Blake's best line of the night upon receiving a toy gas tank: "Mom, will you cut off the tag? Oh wait, we better leave it on so I don't forget what it goes to." (The tag had a picture of a car on it.)

We played a rousing game of "The Game of Things" (best large group game ever) where every passing hour seemed to get funnier and funnier. We were all pretty delirious from lack of sleep by the time midnight rolled around.

We ended the night with fireworks that were sure to wake up anyone within a two mile radius.

Under the Tree

Christmas 2011 in Ten Pictures:

1. Early morning church and quick peaks at what Santa brought.

2. Home to piles of presents.

3. First Christmas where Nash could unwrap.

4. The only things that Blake asked Santa for; a pirate telescope and a hook.

5. A carefully pieced together wrapping job from a beaming Blake.

6. New apron.

7. Got Nash?

8. Teaching our children how to break into safes and sneak out of the house.

9. Done unwrapping, mesmerized with new toys.

10. Hours and hours of happy entertained boys.

(11. Aftermath and naps all around)

Twas the Night Before

First of all, Happy New Year! I cannot believe that another year has come and gone.

In my mind I'm repeating, Hallelujah! We made it through another Christmas! I'm so happy that it's all over.

We really did have a great Christmas, but it felt like a complete whirlwind this time around. The fact that I'm just getting around to uploading the bazillion pictures reflects how much we've been juggling over the last month.

The spirit of the season still seeped in here and there, but it definitely wasn't in the quiet moments I envisioned we'd have with our eyes all aglow sitting next to the tree each night. I was reminded that life is not going to miraculously slow down at some magical point.

And even though I have an overwhelming urge to finish up the de-cluttering of our house, put the last of the decorations away, make room for new toys, and produce sparkly clean countertops, I figure I better document a bit of the holidays before the entire month of January passes us by.

We took a quick trip to the desert to spend Christmas with my family. Our Christmas Eve festivities were unconventional as usual, but we clung to those traditions nonetheless.

No Christmas would be complete without transforming my mom's color-coordinated tree into something tacky. The tree has been adorned with a different items throughout the years. We've stayed up late giggling while placing kitchen utensils, balls of yarn, sticky notes, stamp pads, and toys on the tree. This year, we decided on an office supplies theme.

We kicked off Christmas Eve with one of my dad's famous meals and a feature presentation of The Magic Show Extravaganza. Ever since the magician came to Blake's school, he has been begging to do our own magic show. Since my brother and I had a lot of experience producing magic shows in our basement growing up, we were almost semi-professional in our presentation.

Almost.

(Let's just ignore the fact that the lighting wasn't great and these aren't the highest quality photos.)

Blake put a lot of gusto into his tricks.

Abra-cadabra!

Everyone (except the Scrooge, but who could really blame him?) participated in the grand event. My dad made some coins magically disappear in his pocket. Our final trick even featured a disappearing person. The table with the blanket over it helped slightly with that one.

Let's take a closer look at two things that made the magic show especially classy.

1. The gigantic fake fire pixelating on the TV. The crackling noises it produced added a nice touch.

2. The stocking holders.

While we were adorning the tree with staplers and scissors and rolls of tape, the guys rearranged the letters of the stocking holders. 

Extra classy. I can't believe I'm even sharing this with the public.

Originally, the stocking holders read "Joy, Peace, Noel." 

We laughed pretty hard about all of the "special" touches.

Then it was time to open the traditional matching pajamas.

After we changed, the Scrooge (aka Troy) pointed out, "The magic show was nothing. I'm about to do the strangest thing I do all year." The final gift of each Christmas Eve contains rolls of toilet paper and individual kazoos.

The tradition dates back years and years, but let's just say it involves a parade and the humming of "Stars and Stripes Forever" and leave it at that.

I think the Scrooge secretly likes our fun family festivities.

And one thing is for sure, the boys love these traditions. They are going to grow up thinking that these things are completely normal.

Then it was off to bed while visions of sugarplums danced in their heads.