Christmas Eve 2015

Christmas Eve was awesome this year. 

It started off with a rare sugar cereal breakfast (that I left out for the kids) along with a note telling them they could have two bowls and watch a show (and let us sleep in!).

I think they ate the whole box... and they also let Kevin and I sleep in until 10:30am. Ryan slept in and then read books in his crib until we got him. He never called out or asked for us to come get him. Amazing!

LOVE these kids and man did all that sleep feel good. We were up until 2am wrapping presents last night so it was needed.

Once we got up I went running and ran an errand or two while Kev played with the kids and got them making his annual candy cane cookies. He made them growing up and LOVES them, so of course the kids love them now too!

Then I had the kids take turns joining me in "Santa's workshop" to wrap the presents they bought for one another the other night. Santa's workshop is awesome because you wrap presents and eat treats. They were all big fans of that activity :) Ryan mostly ate his treat while I wrapped his presents... but he was there for moral support.

I rounded out the afternoon by organizing Catie's room for a few hours. I re-organized Ryan's room last week and Andrew's room yesterday so now everyone's rooms feel prepared for a few new toys tomorrow!

(Here's a sneak peak of Andrew's room from yesterday. I should've taken before photos, but his room was such a disaster I couldn't bear to do it. We also moved his furniture around to make space for a new gift he is getting tomorrow.)

Around 5pm we headed out to dinner at a favorite local Mexican restaurant. The food was so yummy and the kids were so darling. It is so nice to not have to bring any entertainment for them and just sit and chat together and have everyone be well behaved (though goofy). 

I'll blame it on the baby and my 4 mile run earlier today... but I ate every single bite of my two cheese enchiladas. They were so good!

After dinner we did a few cookie deliveries and then we went home.

We kicked off our evening festivities with new Christmas jammies. Catie is looking forward to next year when she'll have a matching buddy to dress up with.

Then we ate candy cane cookies and read a few of our favorite Christmas stories while we drank hot cocoa. The two favorite stories for tonight were The Christmas Train and The Miracle of the Wooden Shoes.

The kiddos also helped us use the many nativities we have around the house to retell the story of the first Christmas. 

After that the kids exchanged their siblings gifts. They were SO CUTE about it. They did a really good job finding gifts for each other that were the "perfect" gifts so there was a lot of jumping and smiling and thanking. I loved watching how excited they were for each other. They got to play with their new toys for a bit and then we got everyone's teeth brushed.

We ended the night doing our scripture advent that we've been slowly doing all month. You are supposed to read different scriptures each night, but we only managed to do it 2-3 nights per week this month so had several to catch up on. Each of the scriptures in the advent teaches about different characteristics of Christ. Andrew is a very enthusiastic scripture reader so we let him read a lot and then Catie would "help" read by repeating different sections. While we read our advent candle burned... which of course is the highlight of the scripture reading time... especially because everyone wants a turn to blow it out.

Tonight we read several really great stories about Christ and his life and it was fun to sit around together and talk about the miracles he did. Catie and Andrew get goofy and break into song singing their favorite primary song "Jesus is the God of miracles" whenever we read about some of the miracles mentioned in the song. It really brings such a sweet spirit into our home. 

We ended the night by putting everyone to bed... and then getting visited several more times by the big kids... then remembering we forgot to put out cookies & milk & carrots... so we did that... and now we are hopeful everyone is asleep!

We wrapped all of the gifts last night, so tonight we just have a few things to set up. If we manage to get to bed before midnight it might be a Christmas miracle!

Although we have missed spending Christmas Eve with extended family this year we have really enjoyed the time together as just our little family too. 

Merry Christmas Eve!

Christmas in San Francisco 2015

Continuing our usual tradition, we headed into San Francisco for some Christmas fun after a busy Saturday! There were several fun moments and some stressful ones (picture three kids running towards the street and me with no voice to get them to stop), but all in all, we had a great time and everyone made it home! It was touch and go there for a minute or two though.

We started at Boudin Bakery at Fisherman's Wharf with some yummy tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches. I could eat that every day. It is SO yummy! All the kids swarmed Grandma Julie so we had a grown up table and a Grandma Julie kid's table. I'll bet you can guess which one was the craziest!

Next we headed down to Pier 39 to check out the big tree, take pictures, grab some mini donuts at Trish's Mini Donuts and we also visited the sea lions. I actually had never seen them before so that was a treat. The kids thought they were really funny.

It was so neat to have the whole Smith clan in town for the weekend and get all the cousins together... even if I couldn't talk with anyone and it was a really short visit! Jessie was my interpreter. Earlier in the day we celebrated Sophie's birthday with bounce house fun at Scott & Cat's house and then we had Catie's gymnastics b-day party and our Ward Christmas breakfast (hence the reason my voice was gone by the time we got into the city).

Ryan and Catie had fun trying out our new piggyback rider while we roamed the city (since I am working with them over on my Toddler Approved blog this week).

We ended the night with a trip to Ghirardelli Square. The line was insanely long at both of the ice cream shops. Fortunately we stuck it out and then other people started getting impatient and leaving in droves... so then we got in and out quickly. It was awesomely yummy!

Ryan wanted nothing to do with ice cream so we got to eat his :)

I really wanted to swing by Union Square and check out the windows at Macy's and the tree but at that point it was already 9:30 and I think Kevin thought I was a bit crazy... so we headed home! Ryan zonked out on the drive back and then we all got to bed pretty quick once we got home and slept in until almost 10am today so that was lovely. 

Hooray for Christmas fun in San Francisco! 

Past Christmas in SF Trips

2014

2013

2012

2011

2010

2008

Buskirk Cookie Exchange 2015

Our 6th annual cookie exchange was held tonight! It is one of my favorite holiday traditions! Each year I love seeing what people bring and adding new friends to our guest list. Here are just a few of the awesome cookie exchange entries.

Past cookie exchanges are linked below if you want to check them out...

1st ever (just a really small group)

2nd cookie exchange

3rd cookie exchange

4th cookie exchange

5th cookie exchange

Our judges were pretty fabulous. Andrew and Catie were so excited to stay up and help out and were so well behaved and happy. Catie loved seeing her primary teacher at our house and was adorable and brought me a glass of water during the party since she thought I was probably thirsty. Such a sweetheart!

Ryan got to have a "sleepover" in the pack n play in my closet since the judges used his bedroom for their cookie sampling. He was put to bed around 7:30pm and just played happily in there for an hour and then put himself to sleep... despite the insane amount of noise in our echoey house.

Another shot of the judges. Kevin relished another opportunity to wear his favorite white elephant gift win ever.

A friend forced me to get in a photo at the party. I should've done a better side view to show off my big bump. Only one month till my due date as of tomorrow!! Crazy!

Here are close ups of all of the cookies! They were amazing.

Winner- Wendy decorated all of these cool ugly sweaters and then did the Christmas trees in snow below too. They are so beautiful that I don't want to eat them!

Winner- Jaicy! These were so chocolatey!

Winner- Suzanne! 3rd year in a row!

Winner- Cheryl! These thumbprint cookies were beautiful and a nice twist from the usually chocolatey cookies.

After quite a bit of deliberation the judges announced the winners and passed out prizes!

After the judges made their announcements then everyone grabbed their holiday platters (the dollar store actually had some cute ones this year) and loaded up! So many delicious cookies!

After everyone left around 9:30/45 I finally sat down to eat some appetizers for a much belated dinner and have hot cocoa. Yum! I am exhausted! So much fun to get to chat with so many friends tonight. I can't wait to dive into the cookies tomorrow for breakfast. :)