So, every year, I’m convinced that Christmas with my family gets more and more crazy. Probably because every other year so far, someone has added a spouse or babies (or, in the case of 2015, THREE babies).

Look at all those people!! Love them ALL.

Caleb and Nicole were in town, Nama was in town up until Christmas Eve and it was just FUN.

All the great-grandchildren with their great-grandma. Love it!!

With how nuts everything was the rest of her trip, we really tried to soak her in this day. Love my grandmother.

This was the first time we’d been able to meet Nora!! Baby Nora was just precious. Eisley was in HEAVEN with Nora AND Sammy around.

A New Mexico Christmas Eve tradition is luminarias! This year, Gammy got the supplies and the grandkids all got to fill them and put the candles inside. It was SO cute watching them as they lit the candles.

Apparently Nathan was old enough to do it by himself. I tried to not watch because my heart can only take so much when it’s already pumping on sugar cookie fuel.

So pretty!!

These guys were so proud of how good it looked!! I kept seeing them looking out the windows to check and make sure they still were lit. So cute.

We did our annual gingerbread house contest and let Nathan stay up late and make one. He always feels so big when he gets to do something the others don’t.

Hanging with Baby Nora after the Christmas morning chaos. Love her little fuzz head. She’s the sweetest, chillest baby ever.

I forgot Eisley’s pajamas at home one night, so while Jon drove back to our house to get them, Gammy kept Eisley warm after her bath and just read to her. So sweet.

All the Christmas jammied babies!

How are they so old? I just love these three!! It feels like yesterday that we were taking their first sibling picture on Christmas when Eisley was just three days old.

Soaking up time with the littlest miss the night before they were leaving. Christmas is always so crazy and chaotic and full of kids and crumbs and everything else, but I absolutely LOVE seeing all the family together! Can’t wait for the next reunion.

Christmas is my favorite. Jon and I always set our alarms so we can make sure we’re up and moving before the kids and I think I wake up before my alarm every year. After all the planning and everything that goes into it, I always just get so excited to see their faces.

We always make them wait in our room until everyone is up so they can all come down and see what Santa brought together. Love all three of these blurs running into the room. Ha!

Baby girl! She was SO happy on this day!

Parker’s my kid who almost loves watching everyone else open than opening himself. He was SO happy!

Nathan was OVERJOYED that there was a cowboy hat with his stocking! I don’t think he took it off the rest of the week.

We always do stockings and then stop and have breakfast. Usually because by that time, Mom and Dad really need more coffee. 😉 A little trick I picked up from my parents. Ha! Plus, it gives us a chance to organize all the stuff into boxes so it’s not everywhere when we start opening presents. Stockings are usually smaller gifts because I never want Santa to get the credit for stuff I’m excited to give them. Ha!

Every year, I try to stick to 3-4 presents per kid and every year when it’s all wrapped, I’m like “HOLY COW, there are SO many presents!!” Then I remember that there are three of them now, so that’s a lot. This year, our neighbors also gave the kids gifts, so between them, Nonnie and Papa O and the other O’Brien side grandparents, we had presents coming out of our ears. The kids were SO excited!!

This one always has the best expressions. Ha!

He’s so cute. Every present, he was like, “WHAT?! NATHAN! LOOK AT THIS!”

Eisley would open a present and immediately put it on. Ha!

I found her like this later that morning and I was laughing so hard.

 

Working on their new Lego sets. Christmas morning is always so chaotic and crazy and fun. I love how we’ve gotten into the habit of doing a really slow, relaxed afternoon afterward. We always drink a lot more coffee, eat a lot more sugar cookies and just play with the new toys or watch some of the new movies. It’s the BEST.

Merry early Christmas!!

 

With everything going on and family coming into town the next day, it just seemed like the best thing to do was to have our Christmas Eve on Eisley’s birthday night so we could do our little family Christmas the next day before everyone got here.

If I ever decide this is a good idea ever again, please, someone slap me hard and tell me to just figure out a different solution. It was SO much in one day! Our kids were absolutely exhausted by the time the evening came (not to mention their mom and dad!).

We had our birthday pizza dinner, got all three kids bathed and clean and opened our traditional one present on Christmas Eve.

New jammies for all!! Nathan looks gigantic to me in this picture.

Love this group hug. These three are often bickering or fighting about something but they ADORE each other. It’s been such a sweet blessing to watch my kids grow into each other’s best friends.

Stockings are filled, Christmas 1.0 is coming! Time for this tired Mom and Dad to finally get to bed. 😉

Oh my goodness, we packed so much into this day!!

Eisley woke up to a Minnie Mouse birthday bash! I LOVE decorating the table and having balloons and everything transformed for their big day. I love seeing their face when they come downstairs and it’s their birthday!

Eisley Girl loves herself a cinnamon roll, so we had cinnamon rolls and eggs with sausage, just like she likes them. 😉 Then it was time to get dressed so we could get the birthday going!!

My beautiful girl! Gosh, I love her so much. I just kept looking at her all day like HOW is she this big? The doctors had just handed me this tiny, newborn girl only about seven weeks ago.

Present time!! Little Miss LOVED her new bracelets. I love how she’s acting so big.

She totally ate up all her new accessories. 😉 So much fun!!

The boys were pretty fond of her presents too. 😉

Next up, we hit the mall and headed for Build-A-Bear. Nathan had made one YEARS ago when his friend Hayley moved, but Parker and Eisley had never been. They thought it was so much fun!

The boys each made a little teddy bear too!

Next up, was Mac and Cheese at Olive Garden with the whole family! She got a free sundae and was about the happiest girl in the world.

Turning two is exhausting. 😉

She loved her cake!! So much fun!

Officially two. I can’t believe it. Happy birthday, lovely girl!

Sweet girl,

Today, you are two years old!! I just can’t even believe it. The years are flying past and I feel like you were just born a few minutes ago, and here you are! Running everywhere, little miss independent, feisty as ever! You have added so much joy and laughter to our home and we can not imagine our life without you.

This was a HUGE year for you! I feel like the year between turning one and two is an entire lifetime. You were barely walking when you started this year and now, you never stop playing, jumping, dancing or trying to do whatever your brothers are doing. You love love love, more than anything else, to be right next to me, doing exactly what I’m doing.

I can’t believe how little tiny you were just a year ago! You have grown and changed so much. You have always been so smiley and so funny. It’s so cute to watch your little (HUGE) personality shine this year!

You love to be included in anything and everything that we are doing and you hate feeling left out. If there’s even the idea of you not getting to participate in something, even if it’s an activity you don’t like, you still freak out. Ha! You love to feel big.

You love to make us laugh!! I love how mischievous you can look, with your little nose all wrinkled up, the funniest little gleam in your eyes. You thrive on it! It’s hilarious watching you with your brothers. You also love to be the boss. Any time I tell the boys to do something, you’re right there next to me, echoing whatever I say.

In so many ways, you went from being a baby to a little girl this year. You started talking so much! Your vocabulary went through the roof. You started playing pretend with the boys instead of just wrecking whatever they were doing. But, you’re still my baby and I tell you that often. You need to stay little. 😉

You adore all things GIRL. You love baby dolls and strollers and getting your hair fixed and PINK. You also love playing trucks and digging in the dirt and being a football player in the play room and everything the boys love to do. You are just this incredible, perfect mix of girly girl and tomboy and I love seeing how you meld it all together!

You had a HUGE adventure this year and went with me to London! We had the best girl time together and I’ll remember those sweet days with you forever. You just bring so much sunshine wherever you go.

You are brave. You are smart. You are funny. You are just my precious Eisley girl and we love you so much!

Happy 2nd birthday, baby girl!!

Love always,

Mama

I can’t even believe it.

We did Eisley’s family birthday a few days early since the Christmas chaos was starting right after her big day! She was SO excited and basically told everyone that it was her “bur-day.” And she’d randomly bust out into “Happy bur-day to ME!” Ha!

She was WAY too excited to stand in one place for a picture, but she looked ADORABLE for her party!

I love this picture! She was so enthralled by the ballerina nutcracker! Gammy did such a fantastic job on the decorations – it was SO Eisley.

My sweet girl and Nama. LOVE this.

My baby girl. How is she already two? Time needs to stop or at least slow down.

Little Miss had been up for maybe twenty minutes the next morning before she was fully decked out with all her new birthday presents. Ha! Such a sweet day for our girl!

This year just feels so SO packed full. I always hope to have the time to breathe and be still, but Christmas is always up and gone before we even know it. With the break starting so early, it felt even more like that for some reason. But, we also have had such sweet times! And it was really easy for Jon and I to get back into a pre-kid routine of late night movies and taking turns sleeping in. 😉

He walked past me like this while I was eating breakfast and casually told me see you later, because he has turned into a plane. Ha!

Cookie decorating day!! Otherwise known as How Many Sprinkles Can We Fit Onto One Cookie day. 😉

Someone was a huge fan of this afternoon. 😉 Jammies and all!

Christmas Light Night is a close second to the Melting Pot. We always get Starbucks and drive to the same neighborhoods every year! This year, Nathan made a thank you note for the owners of our favorite house. It was really sweet – such a kind heart to come up with that!

Look who is in town!! My amazing grandma came in town for a few days before Christmas this year! We all piled on all the warm clothes we could find and headed to the River of Lights. So much fun!

Love this of Auntie Cayce and Eisley. She was so in awe of the little train with the lights on it.

Little Miss has been in HEAVEN with so much time with baby Samuel and Nama and Hudson and Nora are on their way here now too! We can’t wait to have the whole family together!!

Goodness, we have not stopped lately. Parker’s doctor’s appointment finally happened and it was confirmed that he does have asthma. I have never in my life seen a medication that worked faster than his inhaler. Seriously, like thirty seconds after he used it for the first time, he just stopped coughing. It was incredible. I’m so thankful this medicine is available for my boy!!

She was just sitting there in her brothers’ Spiderman costume, ripping apart the artwork the boys had made that day. So, like the mother of three that I am, I took a picture of her first before I took the paper away and told her, “You are destructive.” She looked at me, shook her head and said, “No, I Eisey.”

This is the only way we stop. I woke up this morning feeling pretty under the weather, and since it was our school flex day, I decided that we would have a movie day so I could just lay down and drink my weight in tea and orange juice. It seemed to work – by the next evening, I was back to feeling okay.

Just a side note, more so I remember these days than anything. We hit school pretty hard four days a week – Monday through Thursdays. Then, on Fridays, if we have finished all our work for the week, we usually are able to do a lot of “non-seat work”, as in, we play games or read or build stuff or do art projects. Nathan’s school last year did this model and I LOVED it, there was so much more freedom. Plus, we occasionally go to shows at the theater like the Nutcracker or different plays and this way, if we end up not getting everything done on those days, we can slide it around without causing too much issue and our Flex Day just becomes another school day. At this point, Nathan has graduated from 1st grade math and will start 2nd grade math in January, he’s finished 1st grade handwriting, he’ll finish his social studies/history probably at the end of January…. I’m running out of stuff for this kid to do, so he’s just moving on to 2nd grade. 😉

My house is ALWAYS loud, but on this particular day, Jon came home and walked in the door and went immediately to being a rodeo bull, so the walls were shaking with how loud it was in here. I felt like I needed to deliver apology notes and plates of cookies to all the neighbors within a mile radius of us. There is definitely a reason why I get up an hour and a half before everyone wakes up and we still have mandatory rest time while Eisley is napping. #onlytimethehouseisquiet

Winter break hit really early this year! We usually just follow Jon’s school schedule so the kids are always off when he’s off, but starting the 16th seemed SO early. Plus, we’ll have to get back to school on the 2nd now, so I kind of wish we’d done school another week so we could take that week after New Year’s off. Oh well. 😉

First day of break and this is what I walked into after eating breakfast. Oh my goodness.

Someone loves herself a good filter. Ha!

On our way to church – they look so adorable and so old.

My sweet girl is going to be TWO in less than a week and I can barely stand it. How is she so old already?? She was just born a few months ago. This dress was about four different girl’s in the Lunch Bunch and I LOVE that my girl gets to wear it now.

The kids start talking about this night sometime in the fall, they love it so much!! When Parker was a baby, we decided that one of our special traditions was going to be taking the kids for dessert at the Melting Pot at Christmas time every year. And every year, we’ve done it!! When we ask the kids what they are most excited about at Christmas time, they always without fail mention being excited for this night. We always hype it up like a super fancy restaurant and they have to be super big kids and act very polite and they LOVE it. It was finally Melting Pot night and we were all so excited!! We always try to get a picture by the beautiful tree in the entrance.

I had to include this one because this is Parker EVERY SINGLE TIME I TAKE A PICTURE. Parker is probably my most introverted child so not a lot of people see this side of him, but he is a goofball. Ha!

In front of the giant tree at Uptown! We always walk over to see the huge tree after the Melting Pot, but it was SO cold this year, that I could only stand it for about ten minutes. 😉

I love our Christmas traditions!!!

Goodness, we love this crazy time of year. Every year, it gets crazier.

The kids start talking about how excited they are for Advent sometime around August. 😉 We love our nightly routine at Christmas time!!

I was in the school room with Nathan, heard a crash and came in to see this. Seriously this girl is shaving years off my life.

I said, “Eisley Laine!” and she looked up at me like this. I feel like her remorse for breaking about eight rules isn’t where it should be.

Nathan’s library reading book was all about pirates, so this is what we get afterward. Ha!

Bless our long-suffering dog. Eisley is always telling me that Kody is her buddy. Not sure Kody feels the same way.

Parker would happily sit here and color forever. I’ve been doing Mom time with each of the boys after they’ve done rest time while Eisley is still asleep and Parker always wants to color during Mom and Parker time. It’s so sweet! Poor guy has been hacking away for forever now – he has an appointment this week to get evaluated for asthma. Hate this for my boy. 🙁