Christmas 2014: Christmas Morning

Kimber is not a good sleeper in general. But traveling with her is complete and utter torture. Not only does she not sleep through the night, but if she wakes up in the middle of the night and we're not at home - it takes her HOURS to call back to sleep. She fell asleep on the way home from candlelight service at 10:00pm and slept until 2:30am. From 2:30-4:30am, we tried everything we could to get her to fall back to sleep and nothing worked. Finally, she fell asleep from pure exhaustion from crying and slept until 8:00am.

 

After the world's worst night of sleep, we discovered Santa Claus had filled the stockings and brought gifts!! I love stockings. At age 37, it's still one of my favorite traditions. The stocking always has to have an orange in it. Always. One year, Santa forgot and left them in the refrigerator!! I pointed this out to Dad and luckily he found them!

 

 

 

 

Santa ate a couple bites of the cookies, but left enough for Kimber to enjoy some for breakfast.

 

 

 

 

 

Time to open gifts!!

Since we were traveling for the holidays, we told Santa to leave the big gifts at our house which meant, Kimber didn't have a Santa gift to open on Christmas morning(besides her stocking). She did have gifts from family and small gifts from Mommy & Daddy.

 

Franny's girls waited patiently to open their gifts while Kimber opened hers first.

 

 

 

After we opened gifts, we played with the toys, ate breakfast and drank a lot of coffee! Then we got ready to head out. Before we went home, we stopped by the nursing home to see Great Gramma & Grampa Schuler and give them their gifts. It was great to see them since we only get to see them a handful of times a year.

 

These pictures of Kimber drinking her sippy crack me up. She ALWAYS has to hold our ear while she's drinking out of her sippy cup. Not her own ear, but the ear of the person holding her. It must be a comfort thing for her? Sometimes in half way thru drinking her cup, she'll reach over to the other ear and feel it - just to make sure it's there - and go back to holding onto the ear closest to her. Silly girl.

Christmas 2014: Christmas Eve

We went back to my parents for Christmas Eve this year and the fun started on the road trip back home. While Kimber slept the entire way, I was IMing on Facebook with my entire family. Pictures where sent. Jokes were made. Status updates were given. It made the three hour trip fly by! And I had a lot of laughs along the way!!

 

 

 

Christmas was the usual loud/crazy time with my family! When you get that many rowdy Schuler's in a room...it's bound to get a little crazy! This year, a cool whip fight broke out somewhere between supper and gift opening!! I made sure to stay far away from it!

 

I gave Franny my camera at one point and when I looked back at all the pictures...it was a Little Donna show! She wanted her picture taken with everyone! I love it since we don't get to see her that often. 

 

It took a while for Kimber to warm up to a new house and my family that she doesn't see as often, but once she did...she had a great time playing with her cousins!

 

 

 

 

 

Kimber has decided that she only likes Auntie Oobie every other times she sees her. Unfortunately, she liked her last time...you know what that means. Until Oobie bribed her with candy!

 

 

We had the traditional Chicken & Dumpling soup for dinner. I look forward to it every year for Christmas Eve! Also, everyone likes getting their picture taken while eating soup...or maybe not.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 After supper, we opened gifts, had some drinks and then it was time to go to church. One of my favorite things about Christmas Eve is the candlelight service while singing Silent Night. This year, we opted out of holding a candle at the same time as an 18 month old...but it was still my favorite part of the service!