Christmas 2018

   Christmas was another joyous holiday for the DeLormes again this year.  I truly just feel so blessed each and every year that I get to spend Christmas with family and create such neat traditions with my children.  Christmas is just so special to all of us and I know every year we are creating memories that we will cherish for years and years to come!

A few days before Christmas, Joey took the little girls to get their picture with Santa.  

   We try to spend as much time together as possible for Christmas.  We always get to my parents house early on Christmas Eve to start the festivities.  When we arrived, Gracie helped my mom make some Chex mix to snack on.

Gracie loves helping to cook

Our little Christmas baby

   We spent the rest of Christmas Eve just spending time together.  We also do a lot of eating in between.  For us, it the best way to spend Christmas Eve.

Emmy practicing her walking

Trying walking on her knees

Such a Daddy's girl!

Checking out the dog cage

   We have eaten the same lunch on Christmas Eve since I was a child.  Since I am Danish, it involves open faced sandwiches and other sides.

Dawson playing some games with Uncle Steven

What a pretty tree with so many presents!

   This year for Christmas Eve dinner, we had lasagna and other sides.

Emmy eating her dinner

Christmas Eve dinner

    After dinner, it was time for the kids to all get in their matching pajamas that the Elf had brought them the night before.  How cute do they look?

Our best attempt at a family picture

 

   After some pictures, it was time for the stockings to be put out for Santa to come fill that night.  

    The kids actually got to sleep at a fairly decent hour.  It is always so hard to talk them into not getting up before 6:00 a.m.  We always tell them, at 6:00 a.m. they can head downstairs.  I can't tell you how much excitement those six kids have as they all run down the stairs to see what Santa brought.  We spent the next several hours opening gifts.  The kids (and adults too) all got spoiled rotten!  It was definitely a good Christmas!

Emmy got a dollhouse from Santa

  My sister had made the saran wrap ball game to play again.  It got too late to play on Christmas Eve, so we played on Christmas day.  Not sure we will play that one again as there was A LOT of fighting this year.

Someone sure enjoys his naps

    In the afternoon, we had our traditional Christmas Day meal which is honestly one of my favorites all year.  That night, we loaded up all our new stuff and headed back home.  Joey and I decided to do things a little differently this year.  We usually bring our gifts for the kids over to my parents house to be opened on Christmas Day.  We have found the kids just rip threw the presents so fast and it gets too chaotic.  We left our gifts for them at our house, and when we got home that night they opened their presents from us.  We liked it much better this way because we could actually see them open each gift.

 
After the kids opened all their presents, we announced that we had a scavenger hunt for their last big gift from us.  They had a blast running through the house looking for clues.

The finally found their last clue on the couch.  Gracie got a Calico Critter dollhouse, and Dawson and Ashlyn each got Ipads. They were all very happy!