Christmas break

We did more fun things during Christmas break.  I was so thankful that Brian had 2 weeks off for Christmas.  I was not ready for him to go back to work.  He was so helpful with Jaxon and Jaxon enjoyed having daddy home.  Another fun thing we did for several nights was to drive around Greensboro and look at all the light displays.  At home we have our family tree, Jaxon has a small tree, and there is a small tree by the front door.  Every morning and every afternoon after he wakes up the trees had to be plugged in.

We took him to church with us one Sunday because he was an little snotty and didn't want to leave him in his class to spread germs.  We had the most embarassing thing happen.  During the service Jaxon was getting wiggly and I realized that I didn't bring any snacks with me so I took him downstairs to see if we could find some.  Thankfully we found some goldfish.  I had a hard time getting him to go back in the service.  He enjoyed playing with the water fountain and then running around in the hallway.  Finally I got him to go back in the service to sit with daddy. We sat at the end of a row near by the exit door which was helpful when we had to make our escape.  But when we came back in Jaxon decided to yell, "daddy daddy" as he ran to our seat.  He is always so excited to see his daddy.

There was a birthday party for Jesus that I took the kids to at church one morning.  I had showered that morning and I felt put together plus it was our anniversary and we were just a few minutes late, but today was going to be a great day.  We were so excited to go.  They had so many fun things for the kids to do.  We got there and listened to the story and then we sang Happy Birthday and they had a yummy cake for us to enjoy.  The lady in charge said "parents this is for you, I want you to see Christmas through the eyes of your child"  Jaxon is doing alot more and talking so much more so I was excited to see Jaxon enjoying every minute of it. Of course all Jaxon wanted was the cake, but they weren't ready to cut it yet.  He wasn't interested in doing anything else. So of course since he didn't get his way we had a meltdown.  We both left there in tears.  It was a really hard day.  Sometimes things just don't go as planned.

We usually are out of town for Christmas so we aren't always here for the Christmas Eve service.  This year since Kaelyn was just born we weren't planning on going anywhere.  We were able to go to the Christmas Eve service and Jaxon sat with us the whole time and did pretty good.

Growing up we usually were on the road Christmas Day visiting family in Maryland, which was like a 2 hour drive from my parents house.  I was looking forward to staying home this year and spending time with just our family.  My parents were in Tennessee with my sister, brother in law and niece waiting for my nephew to be born.  So nobody in my family could come see us.  We were going to go visit Brian's family about an hour away, but it was just going to be too much in one day.  We didn't want to be on the road all morning and then have to rush back for nap time.  So we really enjoyed being at home to spend time together.  Since Jaxon is older now we wanted to do some fun things with him on Christmas Day. Brian made some pumpkin pancakes for breakfast using fun cookie cutters, we watched a video about the Christmas story, Jaxon opened his gifts and played with his toys.  We didn't do alot as far as gifts this year.  We wanted to make sure we kept the focus off of gifts and make sure Jaxon knew what the meaning of Christmas was really all about. We haven't introduced him to Santa Claus yet and probably won't bring that into our Christmas celebration.  Everybody has their own Christmas traditions.  We just feel like for us we want to teach Jaxon that Jesus is the reason we celebrate Christmas.  We want him to be excited when he wakes us  that its Jesus' birthday instead of I wonder if I was good enough for Santa to bring me presents.  I wonder what he brought me.  There is nothing wrong with families that choose to celebrate with Santa.  We just want it this way for our family.  We aren't sure how things will go next year because I'm sure his friends will talk about it.  We won't hide Santa from him.  We are just choosing not to celebrate with Santa.   

Jaxon ended up getting 3 remote control cars for Christmas which he loves.  All 3 are different and its perfect because we can race the cars together since there is one for each of us.  Kaelyn got her first baby dolls.  Jaxon has decided he is going to take care of the dolls until Kaelyn is old enough to play with them.  He also got some games that we are excited about playing with him and a headlamp just like his dad's.  Our neighbors came over and brought Jaxon a fooseball table and air hockey table just his size.  Their kids had out grown it.
Thankful for hand me downs. He's had so much fun with all his new toys.

Its been pretty cold outside the whole time Brian has been home but there was one day that it was warm enough to bundle up and head to the park as a family. Its been hard to find creative things to do with it being so cold outside.

We enjoyed painting, building with our blocks or anything we can find to make towers and train tracks.  We've also been working on our letters.  For Christmas I cut up his paintings and glued them on cards to make note cards for the grandparents.

We also went to a nearby children's museum we hadn't been to in a while.  He loved climbing in the police car, race car, firetruck and other vehicles and of course shopping at the grocery store.  

Jaxon loves to have his friends over or have playdates at their house or go to a nearby park.

For the past few years we've enjoyed having people over for New Years Eve dinner.  Most of us have kids so we decided to celebrate for dinner and then people can watch the ball drop at their own house. We love hosting and are thankful we have the room to.