Our First Family Christmas

Better late than never, right? I could have just skipped it but I really wanted to record our first official Christmas as a family of 3! So here is my attempt at a quick overview...

The night before Christmas Eve (which I like to refer to as Christmas Eve Eve), we rode a Christmas train! It was wonderful and Seth LOVED it!! It was a real train that traveled from Springdale to Fayetteville and then back to Springdale. The kids wore their pajamas and we were served cookies and hot chocolate. We also sang Christmas carols and got a visit from Santa and Frosty the Snowman! :)

About halfway through the train ride, we gave Seth a Christmas present... "The Polar Express". We plan to ride the Christmas train every year and we wanted to commemorate the first year of our new tradition so we gave him the book and wrote a little note in the front of it!

When we got home from the train ride, we made cookies for Santa!

We had our "Christmas Morning" on Christmas Eve morning this year because we wanted Seth to be able to have a Christmas at home but we also wanted to travel to see our families during the weekend.

After we opened presents, Seth and Evan went outside to try out Seth's new ride while I made pancakes!

We had double chocolate Santa pancakes and they were delicious!! I saw some similar Santa pancakes on Pinterest but decided that I wanted our Santas to be made with chocolate pancakes and fresh fruit. I found the recipe that I used for the pancakes here. We also did "Elf on the Shelf" this year and our elf, "Gus", came to our breakfast to say goodbye until next year! :)

And don't worry, we didn't forget about Jack this year! He had some goodies in his stocking too! :)

We spent the rest of the day at home playing and packing and we headed to Little Rock late that afternoon. We got to Little Rock around 8:30 and we went straight to my grandparents' house for dinner and a few gifts.

My grandmother, my mom and me playing in our new hats :)

My grandparents gave Seth this superhero costume and I thought he looked SO cute playing in it!

We spent that night with my parents and on Christmas morning we opened more presents, ate brunch together and read the REAL Christmas story together before packing up and heading to Arkadelphia to be with Evan's family.

At Evan's parents' house, Seth got to meet some Aunts and Uncles that he hadn't met, we ate dinner together and we opened MORE presents... and we learned that Seth is a really great drummer! :)

We spent the night with Evan's parents that night and the next morning, Seth was FINALLY ready to hold Preslee. She was almost a month old at this point and every time we had tried to get him to hold her before, he quickly opted out! haha

He loves his sweet baby cousin (and I LOVE how he is holding her tiny little hand in this picture)! :)

Evan and I have officially decided that Christmas as parents is WONDERFUL and we look forward to many, many more! :)