The Deaner Family: Christmas

Christmas was amazing this year. It was such a fun year. Ashlyn is getting old enough to enjoy it and Caiden is the perfect age. We really enjoyed our first Christmas in our new house. Christmas eve, Chris had an app or something on his phone that tracked Santa. Caiden was obsessed with this, continually asking where Santa was, and when he got close he actually made us put him to bed LOL. Me and Caiden baked cookies for Santa and cut up carrots for his reindeer.

Christmas morning I was up and showered by 5:30am just waiting for the kids to wake up. Of course they slept till 8am. Caiden came running in our room yelling "Santa came, Santa came". We went down stairs and opened up all our presents. I loved watching Caiden's face as he opened each gift. Ashlyn opened a couple gifts but was moving to slow for Caiden. So, Caiden helped her open most of her gifts. She wasn't very interested in the opening process she just loved playing with the toys under the paper.

At 10:00am we went to my moms where Santa had brought more presents for the kiddos. We ate snacks opened more presents and spent time as a family.

At 12:00pm we headed over to my Aunt and Uncles for Christmas dinner. We always have my grandma's famous lasagna. It was so yummy I ate way to much and was in so much pain. I swore off food till of course the next day.

After spending the rest of the day at my Aunt and Uncles we headed home and stopped by the Kujala's for one last Christmas celebration.

It was a busy day and the kids were asleep before we made it home. But it was an amazing day and of course the kids were spoiled.

The next morning as we were opening all the new toys. Caiden and I stopped and went through all his old toys he had and we donated a huge box of toys. He was the one that made the decision to donate these toys to. These donations were on top of the toys we donated before Christmas when we were moving and found a ton of toys he didn't play with anymore. I was very proud of him.

Overall i could not be more happy with our holiday season. I was very stressed with the move and getting settled before the holidays. It all worked out for the best. We are amazingly blessed, and couldn't ask for anything more.

New Years was low key for us. All our friends headed to the dunes for New Years. I was looking for something to do that was family and kid friendly. Mill Ave was having a new years celebration from 6-9pm that was kid and family friendly. So we drove out there picked up our friend Terisha, parked and rode the light rail to Mill Ave. Well it turned out to be a huge bust. The kids area sucked and there was nothing else really going on. We decided to have nice dinner and then call it a night. Dinner was yummy and by the time we left the restaurant at 9:30ish, Mill Ave was BUSY! We hopped back on the light rail and headed home before all the craziness and drunk people got on the road. Caiden was super sad because he wanted to go to the "party"(kid area on Mill). We tried to tell him that we went to the "party" but that there wasn't much going on. He cried till he fell asleep in the car. We lit sparklers the next night to make up for the stupid "party" on Mill Ave.

Tracking Santa