Merry (belated) Christmas!

Pictures:

* Santa visit - note that no one was crying :-) This Santa is amazing...we've seen him every year since Kyle was born.

* Kyle proudly displaying his cookies & carrots for Santa and his reindeer. Please pardon the MESS behind him...and this was BEFORE more presents?!?!

* Before...

* After...yikes!

* The moment when Kyle saw his Bat Cave. He's been talking about asking Santa for this for months! His cousin Logan has it and he LOVES playing with it! Needless to say he was very excited. And the boys headed right for Brookies stroller and baby doll :-)

* Brooke finally got to play with her baby doll!
* My sweet babies in front of the Christmas tree (cute pj's - thanks Aunt Elena/Uncle Brian!) L-R: Jack, Kyle, Brooke & Ryan

* The Logan boys with our good friends the West boys (Dave & JP) visiting from Philly (mommy Katy was there too!

* My grandma with lots of her great-grandchildren on Christmas Eve. And three were missing!

* Grandpa Logan with Kyle & Logan, pre-gift opening

* Kyle & Logan

* Aunt Jill with the babies

* Aunt Kris and Aunt Jill cuddling with Kyle

Merry Christmas! It's been such a busy time, it's taken me so long to blog! We had a wonderful holiday but not very relaxing. I guess I don't even know what that word means anymore and won't for a long time :-)

Our season started with Kyle's preschool celebration. I was lucky enough to be at the party, helping with my first school function. My parents also joined me and we had lots of fun.

The weekend before Christmas, we ventured back south to Champaign to spend Christmas with the Logan family. It seems like we were just there for Thanksgiving (oh, right, we were!). We had a great, quick weekend visit. The kids are all becoming great travelers. On the way down, we ended up eating dinner at my parents and didn't have to stop AT ALL! We made it in record time, 5.25 hours...and no major meltdowns. We celebrated Christmas on Saturday afternoon. It was such a fun day. Kyle loves playing with his big cousin, Logan, and learns a lot from him (some good, some silly, some, well, not so cute!). Jack, of course is always happy to see everyone but Ryan and Brooke have to warm up to most. Since we had been back just three weeks prior, they seemed to remember everyone so it was a bit easier for them to let go of me. As always, the kids were spoiled rotten. Kyle was not my "sweet boy", as Aunt Jill was handing out the gifts, Kyle would say, "I want a gift! It's my turn!" Hmmm...I guess our speech about being appreciative and all the discussions about the true meaning of Christmas just went RIGHT out the window! It was so great that we could all be together to celebrate Christmas early...thanks for a wonderful visit!

On Tuesday, the week of Christmas, we took the kids to see Santa. Fortunately we had my mom join us for reinforcement. I was amazed at how good everyone was. Brooke cried at first but then stared in awe at Santa. She wouldn't take her eyes off him :-) Ryan and Jack just stared as well. Kyle was nervous to see him before it was our turn. We told him he had to show his brothers and sister how great Santa is and he had to tell him what everyone wanted. When it was our turn, Kyle proudly walked up to Santa and gave him a picture he had drawn and sat right up on his lap. He told him what he wanted and offered up a few ideas for the babies. He said they might like "toys". What a big help :-)

Since we were leaving for Florida on Christmas day, we decided to go to my grandma's for Christmas Eve. As a child, our tradition was to celebrate with my family at my grandma's, have dinner and go to church. Although everyone couldn't be there, we did manage to have lunch and go to church. It was so much fun because several of my cousins and my aunts/uncles did all go together. I know it made my grandma so happy to have so much of her family together. The triplets definitely add chaos to everything we do, so it's great to have all of their 2nd cousins around to help. They actually fight over who gets to hold/feed/etc each of them :-) We got home around 7 pm, in time for the kids to go to bed. Kyle had made "reindeer food" at school and we had to sprinkle that on the grass, so Santa and the reindeer could find our house. We then got the cookies and carrots ready and Kyle was off to bed.

Christmas morning was so amazing. Kyle woke up after the babies (we managed to keep them entertained in their room!) and we all went out together. The look on Kyle's face was priceless...something I won't forget for a long time. He just stared for awhile, then saw his Bat Cave. And, such a sweet boy, was excited for Brookie to get a dolly (he thought she should have one!). The babies were in awe, but I think it was because they hadn't truly been able to see the Christmas tree since it had the gate around it, until this morning! They were very good about not touching any of the ornaments, until about five minutes later when Jack could no longer help himself! Kyle got to open presents for everyone (he loved that!). We wrapped each child's presents in their own wrapping and Kyle liked looking at the labels to tell us whose presents belonged to who. Kyle also thought it was VERY cool of Santa to put presents in Macey's stocking too! We had to do a swap out with old toys for new as our house is bursting at the seams...toys have officially taken over!

Later in the day on Christmas, we flew to Florida. My parents flew down with us (necessary as we needed three laps!) and we spent a week at their place near Tampa. We had an AMAZING trip, but I'll save that for the next post!

I do have to mention that all three babies are now walking. Batten down the hatches!

We hope you had an amazing holiday season...