Scenes from Christmas Break

Christmas Break flew by - it was a very low key and relaxing one with nowhere to go being 9 months pregnant and also nothing open thanks to the pandemic.  Tatum spent at least one day in pajamas!

The day after Christmas Derek's parents visited to celebrate and we had a nice Christmas dinner with both families, lots of attention for Tatum and Christmas Bingo.

The 27th was our lazy play by the tree day - we played with all of the toys and slowly started putting some things away too.

Speaking of putting away, we put our Christmas stuff away a little earlier than usual this year to get ready for the baby - the day after Christmas.  We are however still enjoying our fake trees and garland.

We tried to be a little bit productive occasionally over break - cleaning out rooms and closets and doing a few things to get ready for baby brother - most days were quite lazy though.

Finishing out the holiday season we had a couple friends over for a New Year's Eve party centered around the kids - early countdown, balloon drop, chocolate milk martini's even though they all made it until midnight anyway.

Christmas 2020

We didn't get downstairs until a little bit after 8 - It's great that Tatum is still at an age of such excitement but not rushing down at the crack of dawn.

We took our time opening gifts, taking breaks to play with gifts, bouncing from toy to toy and enjoying family time on this special day.  Tatum really liked all that Santa brought - the grocery store was definitely a hit as was the trampoline set left in the basement.

Around noon we went over to my parents house to do brunch and gifts with them and my brother and spend a bit of the afternoon relaxing there.

We came home mid afternoon to take a break and everyone took the most relaxing and nice Christmas naps, waking up very refreshed for Christmas dinner.

Family came over for our usual ham Christmas dinner and lots of playing with toys.  We finished off the night with a movie on the couch (Tatum's favorite) and probably his favorite Christmas movie at that - The Grinch.

Christmas Eve

My favorite day of the year - Christmas Eve Eve - We had family over for dinner, cookie baking and some last minute Christmas tasks.

After dinner we got right into cookie baking - this year Tatum did most of the cookie cutting and he had a great time doing it.

Once we finished up, Derek and I quickly got our cinnamon rolls ready for the next day, Bernard was ready for his goodbye and we started Christmas Vacation.

Tatum woke up ready for Santa on Christmas Eve morning - he kept looking out windows to see if he could see him.  We did our traditional breakfast of cinnamon rolls to start the day.

In a new tradition, we still had Tatum's Santa costume from last Halloween and I'd made some little cinnamon bread loaves the day before so we let Tatum deliver them to neighbors - it was one of the highlights of the day - he had so much fun and we had fun watching him do it.

On a whim I'd seen that some families say you can touch the elf on Christmas Eve only so we let Tatum do that and he was so excited (he even packed him in a basket to bring to Christmas Eve dinner).

Since everything in our area was shut down that meant no dinner out and no church in person on Christmas Eve which was very weird.  We went over for a pasta dinner at my parents house and watched church via zoom on the tv.

As soon as church was over we were on our way back home to try to get to bed early (even though that never happens on Christmas Eve).  We had the most awful rain storm going on but bundled up for Tatum to leave reindeer food outside.

To finish off the night it was the usual Christmas Eve routine - pajamas, leaving out cookies for Santa, The Night Before Christmas, a little bit of a movie and then off to bed for our little guy so Santa could come.