Barnes Christmas

We had our final round of Christmas on Sunday evening at our apartment.  This was my kind of hostessing - Coral brought the food and all I had to do was set the table!!  We had a very nice dinner and everyone brought gifts - the kids were very excited!  Claire got a jewelry box which she absolutely loves.  And she got a bracelet and some "teeth stuff."  Fielder got a basketball hoop (!) and a new toothbrush.




From Uncle Jake, Claire got this cool UVA shirt and Fielder got UVA socks and a football!


Camera battery died so that's all I got!  Fun night  - thanks all!!!

Hulcher Hacienda

Just a couple photos from our Christmas celebration with the Hulchers.  I had my camera, but never even took it out of the bag - thanks Aunt Bradford and Tara for sharing what you got!  We LOVED their new house and it was fun to see everyone.  Sam had even set up his train tracks for the kids, which of course Fielder loved (and the girls too.)  Lots of great food and fun presents too!  Thanks everybody!!

Christmas Day

After Christmas morning with Santa presents and our little Polar Express siesta, we headed over to Mimi and Papa's house for more celebrating.  Things were CRAZY for a while....Fielder was getting into everything, I was pulling my hair out.....I am learning to change my expectations, particularly when Fielder is being "difficult."  For a moment, I was ready to drive him home and hire a babysitter so I could enjoy the rest of the day!  But things settled a little and we had a very nice afternoon and evening.  (Especially when he was napping! ha ha)

The kids had so much fun opening presents, stockings, and playing together.

Nothing like a little pre-dinner plumbing problem!  Luckily Andy came to the rescue (had this happened in our home, we would have had to bring out the paper plates and call a plumber!)



              We had a delicious dinner as always (THANKS MOM!) at the Maison du Mason.  Definitely a Merry Christmas!  Thanks Masons for all the wonderful gifts!

Chrismtas Morning

Christmas morning in the apartment....early, quick, and so very sweet!  We woke up (very early) to hear Fielder on the monitor saying "Ho ho ho Merry Christmas!"  I went in to get the kids (Claire had requested to sleep in the room with Fielder that night) and couldn't wait to see their faces when they went into the living room.
Santa's elf had left candy in our elf shoes:

And he had eaten most of his cookie, helped himself to some milk, and even left a little note for Claire!

Santa and his elf had even played with our toys and put up the nativity set.

I tried to slow things down, but they were so excited to see what Santa had brought.  They opened stockings first - pet shops, soap, vitamins, chapstick, and a princess coloring book for Claire.  A Thomas plate, bibs, vitamins, and a sippy cup for Fielder.

Santa had left a candy cane trail from the tree to their presents...Fielder was pretty obsessed with eating them.  So Claire scooped them all up to save for later!


I didn't get pictures because I was taking video, but Santa came through on the kids requests this year!  He brought Claire a Sophia the First doll, hedgehog Critter babies, and the Panda Critter family.  Fielder got a train table with trains and cars!

Bed-headed, sleepy smiles!  (Make a note, next year we need cute Christmas jammies!)

Claire also got a tooth fairy pillow from Mommy and Daddy and a Barbie from Fielder.  And Claire did her shopping again this year - a screwdriver set for Daddy, a dinosaur for Fielder, and a gingerbread ornament for me that she had made at school.  Fielder got some little trucks and a book from Mommy and Daddy.

The whole thing was over and done in 20 minutes!  We had a yummy breakfast (waffles with cherry pie filling and whipped cream.)  Rob and I tried to catch a little nap on the couch while the kids watched Polar Express before heading off to our next stop for Christmas!

Christmas Eve 2013

Christmas Eve was an exciting day in our little "home away from home" - we had my family over for dinner and some games for the kids.
We played pin the nose on the snowman, a hide and seek puzzle, a Christmas craft, toilet paper snowman game, and we decorated cookies for Santa.  (can click on the pictures to see them bigger)


We had the Barnes Christmas Eve tradition of soup for dinner.  We did have to ask for someone to bring an extra chair, but we fit everyone in  :-)


After dinner, the kids read books, played, and did a little dressing up (Princess Santa and The New Elf.)  If I can ever get it to work, I have a cute video of all the kids singing Jingle Bells.


After everyone left and Fielder was in bed, Claire sprinkled some reindeer food in the grass outside, got Santa's cookies ready, and left him a special key.


Claire was leaving the key on the balcony and thought she heard bells so she ran inside!
A quick reading of The Night Before Christmas and we were off to bed!

Hustle & Bustle

As crazy as Christmas time can be, I love all the fun things to do with the kids and especially love to see the excitement on their faces.

Saturday, Mom took Claire and I to a Christmas musical.
It's always fun to have a "girls day."

Next up was our annual visit to see the Real Santa.  Every year I ask myself if this is really worth it, and this year was particularly difficult!  Rob arrived at 8am (an hour before Santa arrives) and the line was longer than we had ever seen before.  He called me and told me there was no way we'd be in the first group to see Santa come down the chimney.  Oh well....we showed up at 9:30 and Rob was at the "2 hours from here" sign.  THANK GOODNESS it didn't really take that long.  I took the kids to play while he kept waiting and we finally made it in.  Claire posed with the Snow Queen and when Santa called their names, she was able to say in the microphone what she would like for Christmas.  (A completely different item than she's been talking about the last few weeks might I add...)  Fielder kind of just sat there stone-faced.  It was better than my expectations really because I predicted another screaming, flailing type picture like last year.

After seeing Santa #1, we headed over to a Christmas party thrown by our realtors - they do it each year as a thank you to their clients.  The funny thing was after all the hassle of seeing Santa, they had a Santa at this party!  And he had NO LINE.  And they had a professional photographer to take FREE pictures.  sigh....

To be honest, I knew this already, but there is just something about having pictures with the same Santa each year all lined up on my fridge.  So I prepped Claire and told her that sometimes since Santa can't be in so many places at the same time, he sends his elves to pretend to be Santa.  As soon as we got there, Claire whispered in my ear "is that an elf?"  

Anyway, it was great because Fielder had a chance to warm up to this Santa and was eventually running up to him to give him high fives and destroy look at the ornaments on the tree.  

Sunday night we took a quick drive to see one of our favorite houses and walk around to see the lights.  It's one of my favorite things to do!  Fielder was speechless...a rare moment.  And Claire's favorite was the grinch on the roof that sprayed snow every 5 minutes.

Ice, Ice Baby

Sunday we had ice and rain so we decided to stay put for the day!  I don't know if it was really that bad out, but it was the perfect day to stay inside.  We started working on our letters to Santa.  And we watched The Grinch a few times (Claire was terrified of the Grinch earlier in the week and now she begs us for it.)  We may or may not have let the kids watch TV for the better part of the afternoon.  And we even decided to let them have a "picnic" which somehow ended up on top of the coffee table. 

Claire and Fielder's letters: