Christmas Day, Up North, and New Years Eve

The boys did not get up too early.  I think we were all up around 7 am.  I am thinking next year we will be up much earlier, but that is because we will have little ones again. :)  We had a great day, it was pretty lazy, but exactly how it should be!  The boys played with toys and Nick and I packed up to go up north.

Because of appointments this year we only had about a 72 hour window to travel.  Normally we would go up for about 5 days total between Traverse and Rogers City, but we are trying to conserve sick days, so we schedule appointments for both me and Vince over break.  The weather started off great for travel, but by Monday when we had to head home it got bad!  We were going to leave Traverse City around 4 pm, but because of an ice storm we ended up leaving at 10am. We were at each place for about 24 hours each, but got in everything, so it worked out well.  The last 30 minutes of the drive was not great, but we made it safely.

New Years Eve was fairly uneventful this year, we stayed home.  We bought pre-made food so it was a super easy dinner and then we had an early count down.  We youtubed a count down from last year and did it at around 8:30 for the boys.  I almost fell asleep at 11:30, but was able to make it to midnight!

It ended up being a really busy break, but it was a great vacation.

 Christmas Morning

 Hanging out on the couch

 Rogers City "snowball fight"

 Because there was no snow, we used marshmallows as the snow. 

 More presents

 Tools

 Stuff from Hawaii.  Ralph and Jan celebrated their 40th Wedding anniversary this December, so they went to Hawaii in honor of it.

 Traverse City presents

 New Years Eve

Christmas Eve

We decided when we had kids that we would always try to be in our own house for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day and so far we have been.  In past years we have had people at our house, but this year it was just us.  It has worked our really well and I am very happy that we have stuck with it.  Growing up, being in my own house was always my favorite.  It was great to see other family, but there is something magical about Santa coming to your house.  This year we did early church on Christmas Eve so we had a very early dinner.  This year I had chicken pasta and the boys had steak and crab legs.  Crab was a first for us, Vince loved it and Dominic did not.  We did let the boys exchange presents to each other early in the day, because we knew that they were getting some pretty cool stuff and we wanted to break it up a little.  After church we came home and we opened the rest of the presents to each other.  The boys were pretty excited about everything they got and I think Nick and I did pretty well ourselves.

 Cookie time

 Vince got Dominic a Storm Trooper because he likes them best.  He took a nap with him that day.  Dominic got Vince a race track.  

 Dinner time

 We never know who will be the silly one come picture time.  They are not consistent with it and seem to take turns being silly.

 He is looking so big.  

 Blaze!  Dominic is obsessed with Blaze and the Monster Machines right now.

 Vince got a tablet!  He was super excited because it was a surprise!

 Cookies for Santa

 The aftermath of present time

 PJ time

Letter to and from Santa