Christmas Eve/Day

Christmas Eve was spent at home, relaxing. Dave and I started and finished our Christmas shopping in one weekend! Talk about an exhausting weekend! So, our Christmas Eve was pretty laid back. We watched movies, decorated cookies for Santa and did some last minute cleaning for the big day. We order pizza every Christmas Eve and this year was no different. Traditions are the best! We didn't let the kids take a nap that day so they would be nice and tired for bedtime. Even with how tired Kyson was he was still too excited to fall asleep. My mother in law sends us Christmas pajamas every year to open on Christmas Eve. Dave and I also started a new tradition of a Christmas Eve movie box that our Elf on the Shelf leaves us. It's full of Christmas jammies, a movie for each person and lots of snacks to watch the movies with. It was a big hit! I think we'll do it every year. And guess what? I didn't take any pictures of our movie night. But here's a picture of the jammies my mother in law sent.

Ok I lied.. My shirt is one I've had for a while and Presley's jammies are the ones she got in the movie box. My shirt from my MIL was too small and Presley's are too big. So we improvised!

Kyson's room temporarily doesn't have a door (don't ask!) so we had him sleep in our bed with us. We put him to bed around 9 so Santa could get to work! We told him he had to stay in the room no matter what, unless he needs to go potty. That kid went "potty" about 17 times before he finally fell asleep!! He was just too excited! Dave and I set everything up and finished around 1:30 AM. We snuck in bed with Kyson and tried to fall asleep. Sleep never happened! Even in our king sized bed, Kyson still kept us up! He kept slapping Dave and kicking me so we pulled an all nighter. Holy crap we were tired!! We kick of just shrugged it off and figured we'd just take a nap when the kids napped. Which once again, never happened. They were too excited about all their new gifts that naps were out of the question.

Anyways, Kyson woke up at 6:30 and since Dave and I were still awake we decided to wake up Presley and just start the morning. I literally took one picture on Christmas.. Not only is that a mom fail, it's a life fail! Who doesn't take pictures on Christmas? 

Anyways, I took this picture of Kyson and Dave, then handed the camera to Dave and told him to take pictures while I made breakfast.. These are the pictures he took. I guess that what happens when I count on him to handle the camera.

Even though we were exhausted and the turkey I cooked didn't turn out, we had a great Christmas!

Christmas fun

Christmastime with kids is a million times more magical! We had so much fun this year showing Presley how Christmas works, even though she won't remember it. And Kyson has Christmas pretty much mastered. It filled my momma heart with so much joy watching Kyson help Presley through it all! I feel like all I did throughout December was bake. I made so many different Christmas goodies and somehow didn't gain a pound! We started out the holidays with a Christmas party at our church. Good food, a live Nativity and a message about Christ and what Christmas is all about. It was the perfect way to start off the holiday season! We took the kids to meet Santa, baked, had a couple more Christmas parties, a school Christmas program for Kyson, baked some more and shopped til we dropped!! I was also able to indulge in my favorite Christmas treat more times than I'd like to admit. Thank you Chick Fil A for making the best Peppermint shake ever! But the best moment of all was when Kyson explained to me the true meaning of Christmas. That boy has a love for our Savior and it makes me feel like I've done something right.

 Talk about bad picture quality.. It was taken with my phone.

I'm kicking myself in the butt for not taking more pictures. But it was so nice not worrying about snapping a picture and just living in the now. We had the best Christmas and I can't wait to share our Christmas Eve/morning.

North Dakota

While we were in North Dakota for Thanksgiving we made sure to do a few fun things while there. My niece is big into ice skating, and she's really good, so we went ice skating with her! It was so fun watching her. She's SO good!! Olympics perhaps? We left Presley with her grandparents so we could spend some quality time with Kyson since it was his first time ice skating. He slipped within the first thirty seconds and got so mad that he didn't want to try again haha. So he sat on a chair and we took turns pushing him around on it. He loved that haha.

these are all crappy iPhone pictures, so bear with me.

 And then of course the guys started showing off and trying to one up each other. It was hilarious. The Madsen boys have no shame!

My MIL runs a movie theater so it's a tradition to have private showings of whatever they're playing. We decided on Mocking Jay. I loved The Hunger Games books and it's been fun seeing what they do with the movies. But I've been so disappointed in all three movies so far. I think it's because they leave so much out! Anyway, the very opening scene is of Katniss laying in bed rolling a marble, but for the first few seconds you don't see the marble just that she's rolling something in her fingers. During that scene Dave leaned over to me and said "she's rolling a bugar!" I died laughing for TWENTY minutes over that comment! It still makes me laugh just thinking about it. haha

We spent a lot of our time tending to a sick baby, so we played a lot of card games while Presley slept. we house hunted, did a little bit of shopping and took lots of naps. I don't know why but I was soo tired up there. I could not get enough sleep! We always have the funnest most relaxing visits in North Dakota.

matching head wraps

If there's one thing I love, it's matching Presley! I never thought I'd be that kind of mom but when it comes to baby P, I just can't help myself! I match her on a regular basis, hahaha, but I've only documented it a few times. These head wraps are just too cute not to put on my blog!

mommy and me head wraps c/o Sew Much Baby

Thanksgiving 2014

We spent Thanksgiving in North Dakota with Dave's family. Can I just say how much I adore his family? They're the funniest, craziest family with so much love for one another. I am so blessed to be apart of their family! Anyways, we arrived just in time for some really cold weather. Real cold weather! The lowest it got was -27 degrees and well, we Texans don't own warm clothing for that kind of weather so we spent most of our time indoors where the heaters are! We all ended up getting sick anyways and had to take Presley to the doctor for some antibiotics. She had a double ear infection and croup!! It broke my hear to see and hear her cough. We had a great time on Thanksgiving Day. We played games, watched football, cooked and of course ate our hearts out! I literally didn't pull out my camera once until Thanksgiving Day and even then I only snapped a couple pictures. 

mommy and me photo shoot pt 4

This is the last mommy and me photo shoot post. I swear!

road trip to dallas

We spent the weekend in Dallas over the weekend. Apparently we go there a lot. We love Dallas and it's only a 2-3 hour drive to get there so it's a real easy getaway for us. The kids do great on the road so we try and go as often as we can. I'm thinking we need to visit a new city though. Maybe Austin or Houston. Or South Padre? Decisions, decisions. Anyway,  we spent our time visiting the Dallas Arboretum, which we do every time we go to Dallas! They always have the prettiest, funnest events going on. They had a pretty extravagant pumpkin patch that I was dying to see so I was pretty excited about going. And the weather was pretty perfect, a bit chilly but really not too bad. 

haha Kyson's little head.

So sorry for the zillions of pictures but we took so many good ones!! This isn't even half of them haha. You can say I was camera happy.. We had the best time, as always at the Dallas Arboretum! It's my favorite place on Earth! Dave tummy decided we were done at the gardens so we headed back to Arlington for dinner. We indulged at the Cheesecake Factory, even though we had to wait for 40 minutes with two cranky kids. We did learn that Presley loves their wheat bread. But who doesn't?! I got the Lemon Herb Chicken and the most amazing slice of cheesecake ever. I get the same thing every time and can never remember the name of it! It had reeses, butterfinger, caramel, peanut butter and whipped cream on it. HEAVEN!! After we ate we hit up Grapevine Mills for some shopping! You guys, this mall is so big and we spent so much time there and I literally walked out of there with one thing. It was a top I had been searching for forever so it was totally worth it but really? One item?!

We always have the best time in Dallas! It's a city I recommend everyone visit!