Christmas 2018

Christmas celebrations started for us on Christmas Eve! Nate's mom and dad came over for brunch and presents in the morning! The girls had so much fun opening and playing with everything with them!

After Grandma and Grandpa left, the girls and I made cookies for Santa before heading out to church at 4 and dinner afterward at one of our favorite spots, Little Italian! When we got home it was time to put out the milk and cookies and head to bed!

Christmas Day is always so busy for us, as we're trying to cram in as much as possible! We started the morning with presents at the house! The girls were over the moon with primarily LOL stuff! After opening presents and playing for a bit, we headed to my Aunt Mar's house for celebrating before heading to Nate's Grandma's house for our final celebration of the day!

On the day after Christmas we headed to my parent's house in Crystal Lake! The kids opened presents from my mom and dad, and spent the rest of the day playing! Jade got a kids version of a fitbit from Grammy and Grampy, so she and cousin Cora spent most of the day running around getting their steps in. We finished the day with our traditional dinner at Nick's Pizza!

Our final celebration was on the 27th with my extended family on my mom's side! I always love this day, as we get to see lots of family members from out of state!

December Highlights

Sledding: We have only had one good snow so far this year, so we made sure we got the kids out to go sledding! This was really the first time Jemma has gotten to go and she loved it!!

Putting up the Christmas Tree: We had our traditional feast of snacks as we decorated for Christmas! I had fun decorating this year using some of the Rae Dunn pottery items I collected!

Winter Wonderfest at Navy Pier: One of our annual traditions is going to the Winter Wondefest at Navy Pier with Nate's parents, and this year was no exception! We had a great time and ended the day with a ride on the Navy Pier Ferris Wheel and dinner at Texas Roadhouse!

Santa Visit: We tried a new Santa location this year, The Santa House in downtown Naperville! We went after school, so it was fun to see the downtown lit up for Christmas! Jemma is definitely not a fan of Santa, so we all ended up in a picture!

Christmas Lights: Quite possibly one of my favorite traditions is driving around looking at lights! Naperville has such amazing displays that we spent 2+ hours driving around town. We didn't even cover half of the houses on the list! A highlight for the girls is getting chocolate shakes at McDonald's, this year we got fries too!!