merry happy wonderful days to you

 

abreu family christmas

Sunday 01.02.2011

When I was a kid, we always participated in a Christmas gift exchange with our siblings and our cousins. I love continuing that tradition with our kids. Usually we open the gifts on Christmas Eve, but since we were all in Utah together after the new year, we decided to wait until then. We drove to Chelsea & Rob's house, had a delicious dinner, and watched the kids open their gifts*. It was so fun to be all together. (We missed Mckenon, though. Can't wait for this next Christmas when he'll be home!)

Opening  Gifts!

Grampa Dan & Nonny Kare with all their Grandkids

Weston (4) - Tave (2) - Ryder (5 mo) - Aydrien (22 mo)

Reverie (5 mo) - Syanne (4) - Mila (16 mo) - Kapria (3 yr)

*We did learn one thing, though. Kapria had Weston for the gift exchange, and we decided to get him an awesome Melissa & Doug puzzle that would help him as he learns to read. Very cool gift? Yes. But fun for a 4-year-old to open when all the other kids around him are getting toys? Not so much. I felt so bad. So...next year we'll make sure all the kids get something fun to open and play with :)

christmas with nonny & grampa

Thursday 12.30.2010

Trav's family drove home to Arizona. We met them at Wendy's on their way out of town to give hugs and say goodbye. I'll spare the ugly pictures of us all eating food and you can get this fun one of Trav and his mom freezing outside together.

Then we spent the day over at Nicole & Jeff's. The first order of business: to open Christmas presents with Nonny Kare and Grampa Dan. Instead of opening everything on Christmas day, we had saved the gifts we got for each other to open when we were together. So the girls had a lot of fun opening up their new dollhouse. It was a hit with Weston and Tave too. AND Kapria got princess dress-ups. Everyone wanted to wear them, but I only caught a few of the kids on camera.

The kids all get along so well together now! It's so fun to be with them. Kapria was in heaven because she misses Weston and Tave so much and asks about seeing them all the time when we're home in CA. So it  was a week of awesomeness for her (and all of us).

christmas day

We had a great time opening gifts with Trav's family. We all  kept it really simple this year, though somehow the girls still ended up with a lot of toys. All Kapria wanted from Santa was a Rapunzel doll, so you can see how excited she was to open it. Mila loves Mr. Potato Head, so she got some potato head kids that she loves.  I made cinammon rolls (not from scratch...I need to learn how to do that one day), but forgot about the first batch and burned them. So instead of the house smelling nice and cinammony and warm and cozy, it smelled like burnt food. Oh well.

My only regret from the day was that somehow I missed taking a single pic of Kyndra or Dad! I wasn't paying attention to taking pictures at all and just snagged a few of the girls. I'm sorry Dad and Kyndra - I promise next time I'll do better (and I'll be posting some others of you on the trip :).

We loved being all together as family. That made it an awesome day.

christmas eve

Well, our Christmas plans changed a little when Grandma Anthony passed away on Friday, December 17. We were planning to spend the holidays in Arizona with Trav's parents and all his siblings (a first ever since we've been married. We've never spent Christmas with Jeff and Kjerstin). We all decided to move the celebration to Utah so that we could be together for the holiday and attend Grandma's funeral. Mom was already in Utah from having been with Grandma in the hospital, so we all met her up there throughout the week.

We spent all day Wednesday, December 23rd driving. It was a loooong drive. Kapria did great. Mila had a hard time of it. She will watch a little bit of a movie, then get bored. She'll play with toys for awhile, then get bored. She just wanted to get out and move. So she cried and was whiny a lot, but we made it in town around 2am.

Turns out maybe Mila's sadness wasn't all from the drive. She threw up that night in her crib and was kind of sick the whole time we were in Utah. But we still had a good time. We decided since our Christmas break was supposed to be spent with Trav's family that we would make the time they were in Utah our time exclusively with them. We didn't see any other friends or family during that week.

And we had a really great time celebrating the Savior, celebrating Grandma, and celebrating being together. On Christmas Eve we all went to Eric and Linda's for dinner and the traditional reading of the Christmas story, which always includes acting out the nativity. I love that Trav's family does this because it's a tradition my family did as well (though we haven't quite kept it up as adults) and I love that we get to do this every year.

Kapria was thrilled to be an angel and wear wings. McKay didn't want to participate until he saw that Uncle Kimball was carrying a staff as a shephard. Then he was all about getting that staff. Cousins Wyatt, Thomas, and Taylor were the wisemen, with Trevor as Joseph, Haleigh as Mary, and Evileigh as Baby Jesus.

After we got back to the hotel and put the girls to bed (with his dad watching them), Trav and I headed over to Shawn & Abby's. They were out of town for the holiday (in Arizona...where we had planned to hook up had we been there), so they let us have free reign at their apartment. Since they had a Christmas tree, we decided to open gifts there. Trav and I spent late Christmas Eve wrapping the girls' gifts, making everything pretty around the tree, and finishing those gift tags I told you about. It was a fun night. I love making Christmas fun for our kids!

christmas dinner with grandpa keith

We went down to Kjerstin and Jeff's for a Christmas dinner with Trav's dad (Grandpa Keith to the girls). Kapria and McKay had so much fun playing together. Mila had a great time, too...until she fell. I didn't realize she'd hit her head until I picked her up and there was a huge knot on her forehead. Poor baby! It was the biggest bump either of my kids have had. We iced it, then put the bumps & bruises ointment on it when we got home. Have you ever used this? It's pretty much awesome - we use it for every bruise and it really helps the swelling and pain relief.

Despite the head bump, it was still a great night.

holiday fun #2: listen to the music

I'm really good at finding music I like, but then I always forget to turn it on. So I am trying to play Christmas music as much as possible at our house. Kapria was singing and dancing to Disney's Christmas sing-along today. It was great.

If you want to hear some of my personal favorites, I've added them on our blog. So head on over to listen (if you're not already here).

holiday fun #1: music that's free!

I may be the last person in the world to find this out, but there are several sites giving away free holiday music!

My mom told me about the iTunes Holiday Sampler. It’s a free mix of 20 holiday songs from various artists. I think today might be the last day to download it. Click HERE to go get it.

And my friend Lisa told me about Amazon’s 25 Days of Free. Every day through Christmas, they’re unveiling a new holiday song available to download for a limited time. As of today you can download all the songs from Dec 1 to Dec 15. Click HERE to check them out.

I love music. I love Christmas. And I love free!

to you