Jayme Has a Birthday Party. We Met Beyond 5. Christmas Eve Eve. A Catching Up Post.

On Friday (the 20th) Jayme had her birthday party.

She invited a few friends over to watch Harry Potter.  Along with her food requests (pizza, root beer, brownies, cake balls...) we threw in some jelly beans and called them Bertie Bott's every flavor beans.  The girls made up a chart with their own flavor names, which included earwax, vomit, and prune juice, among others.

Pictures to come, as soon as I can steal them off of The Man's phone.

On Saturday we got to go check out a new band called Beyond 5, which my girls instantly fell in love with.
We stopped and grabbed Panda Express via drive-thru and then hit the road for our 2 hour trip to the concert, which was up in Logan.  Yeah, you heard me, 2 hour trip, one way.

That right there makes me mother of the year.

Since they're a new band we hadn't yet heard much about them.  They've just released their first cd, and have just gotten back from touring Asia, so the girls didn't quite know what they were getting into (check out some videos on them on the post I did here).

But as soon as that first song started, my girls were smitten.  Completely, number one fans.

And that might even be an understatement.

I waited with the girls for an hour after the concert for a chance to meet the guys of Beyond 5 and get some autographs.  We bought a poster for each bedroom and while standing in line one of the crew from the band walked up and gave Tayler a cd.

We had both posters and the cd cover signed.

And the girls snuck some selfies with their favorites.

I was so impressed with these boys, watching them interact with everyone after the show.  They were polite and genuinely nice.  Their music was upbeat with a good vibe and none of their songs has anything that would make me uncomfortable having my daughters listen to it.

I'm behind this group of guys 100%.

We listened to Tayler's cd on the entire 2 hour drive home.

Obsessed.

On Monday we celebrated Christmas eve eve.

Since it wasn't our year for Christmas with The Circus and we needed to take them to their other parents the next morning.

I left work early and went home and made wassail, and put a ham, rolls, and funeral potatoes in the oven.

Papa Mike, Granny Suzann, Lindee, Sam, and Morgan came over and spent the evening with us.

Granny made fancy hot coca.  Papa gave the kids his two cents worth.

We talked and laughed, and chilled.  And opened a few presents.

We thought about joining Lindee and Sam to go see the lights at Thanksgiving Point, but we didn't make it that far.  We stopped at a gas station for slurpees or hot chocolate, and then went home to let the kids open presents.  We wanted them to have some time in the morning to fiddle with their new stuff and check it out before we had to take them to their other parents.

This year I put code names on the presents. (I wrote a guest post on that here).

Tayler had some suspicions on a couple of presents and was hoping that she was reindeer.

When we sat down to open presents I told the kids to grab one present and make sure that they each had a different name.

The kids grabbed presents they had guessed could be something that belonged to them.

Cali grabbed reindeer before Tayler could and Tayler was not a happy camper about that.

I told them to open them and then we would see if they were right.

Cali happened to grab a present that could have been for her so she guessed that she was right.  And we went around the circle, the kids saying who they thought the present they had opened was for.  It finally came to a point where we told Cali she was wrong and the reindeer present was not for her, but the candycane presents were.

Tayler, misunderstanding what was said exclaimed, "She gets to be both reindeer and candycane?"  She was completely frustrated.  But then we told Tayler that no, Cali wasn't reindeer and Tayler's Christmas became perfect as she realized she really did get to be reindeer like she'd been hoping.

This was such a fun way to do the presents, especially as they unwrapped them and tried to figure out who had whose.  I'll definitely be doing this every year.

The rest of the week has been pretty quiet for us.  The Circus doesn't come home until after the New Year and I miss them so much.

I'm not used to them being gone for so long.

We usually do pretty good in how we handle the holidays that we don't have kids for, but we haven't quite found our groove with Christmas yet.  We visited with family on Christmas Day, but we'd already opened our presents with the kids so we kicked back with all our Christmas treats and the pile of new movies that I'd given The Man and enjoyed the holiday the best we could.

Next kidless Christmas, we're taking a cruise.  I'm pretty sure I might feel better about it if I'm sitting on a warm beach somewhere.

Our three days of Christmas

With the swapping my ex Thanksgiving for Christmas it threw our schedule off.  Normally we have both exes on the same weekend and same holiday schedule, so we either have all our kids and can be together as a full family, or we get to be together as a couple.  We like it this way.  But with the switch it made us a little off.  So we had to have two Christmas Eve's and two Christmas mornings, one with Jayme and Sean, and the regular one with the other four girls.
Christmas eve eve:
Christmas eve eve started with lunch with Grandma KC and Aunt Jessica and her crew at Cafe Rio.  Grandma decided to come for a visit for the holidays and this would be the only day while she was visiting that we would have the full circus.  She'd been working for a year and a half on quilts for all her grandkids and they were finally done.  The kids got to tell Grandma what colors they wanted their quilts and they were super excited that they were finally done.  I didn't get a closer pics of Sean, his was done with Sponge Bob material:

That night we celebrated Christmas eve eve.  And of course, no Christams eve eve is complete without a family throw down while watching Christmas cartoon specials on TV:

And of course, the pajamas.  We just gave them comfy bottoms this year so that would be why they're all raising knees and legs.  They wanted to make sure their bottoms could be seen in the picture:

Christmas eve morning Jayme and Sean got to open all of their presents from us, and we let all 6 kids open the presents for the names that they had drawn with each other.

And Papa Mike showed up with his gift, sleds for the entire family:

Which will be awesome if we ever get any snow this year...
I made our traditional Swedish Pancakes for the kids and then Jayme and Sean went off the spend the rest of the holiday with their mom.  Sad for us.
The rest of us cleaned and cooked for the family Christmas eve dinner.
I love my family.  They make me laugh.  My mom was there, with my brother Bill and his family, and my sister McKell and her family.  As well as the world's most awesome father-in-law, Mike.  We laughed and giggled and ate a lot of food.  Thank you to pinterest for the cheesecake filled strawberry idea! Oh, and we had fun watching Sam-I-am and the dogs tease each other:

We also watched Santa's progress across the world with Norad Santa Tracker which was so exciting, even for me.  I think that's going to have to become a yearly thing.  Cali pleaded with me as she went to bed, "Mom, please don't stay up too late.  He's getting close!"
Christmas morning was as magical as it should have been.  Cas got her long awaited for camera and the other girls got their American Girl dolls, which of course, looked just like them. 

And being as Christmas fell on a Sunday this year Santa brought the girls Christmas dresses for church:

Santa also brought me the softest robe I've ever felt in my life *sigh* and Grisham's new book :).

And don't forget about the puppy boys who got a nice cushy new bed:

And although we certainly enjoyed the gift giving and receiving, we didn't forget about the true spirit of Christmas.  There was much love and gratitude expressed and their was a wonderful peace in our home.  As well as, for me, thoughts of my Savior Jesus Christ and not just his birth, but his life.  And his atonement for me.
I have been given much.