Christmas Eve & Christmas Day

So, Rick had to work on Christmas Day but had Dec 23 and Christmas Eve off. So we decided to ask Santa if he could come a day early :) 

On December 23 (which was the day we were celebrating Christmas Eve) Rick and I had planned a short date for that morning to just go look at some minivans to see what we liked and then pick up a quick lunch on the way home. He had been on a rough rotation where we hadn't seen each other much so we wanted a little morning together. So we start out at our first place in Fayetteville and test drove a Chrysler Pacifica. We fell in love with it! We of course had done plenty of research online before even stepping into a car dealership place, but even after test driving it we still loved it. The stow-and-go is a huge plus and I seriously was in LOVE with the keyless entry. It is so awesome, especially since my hands are only going to get more full adding a 4th baby to the mix! So the thought of not even having to deal with getting keys out of a diaper bag while carrying a baby, diaper bag, groceries, and holding other kids hands, was dreamy. You can just walk up to the car and when the key gets close the doors will unlock. 

Anyway..... what was supposed to be a quick "let's check out some vans for a couple hours" kind of morning, it really turned into an all day process of buying a minivan! We did NOT plan on buying a car that day but after test driving a few different vans and going back and forth with the dealer on price, we couldn't pass the opportunity up! At one point we got up to leave because we just felt like we couldn't just buy from the first dealership we went to. We felt a need to shop around a little. But when they saw we were about to walk away they came down even lower to a price that we were super happy with. So we drove a new van off the lot and left the Acura behind (since we ended up doing a trade-in). It felt so unreal!

We had sooo much junk in the Acura (including a bike for
Christmas that we had been hiding in the back of the car).

We forgot to take a picture of our van at the lot but here is one in our garage after getting home late that night.

Rick driving our new ride to church on Sunday! (Christmas Eve)

So the process of actually trading in the Acura, getting all our stuff out, putting it all in the new van, filling out paperwork, etc... took soooo long! Normally we wouldn't mind but we had told our babysitter we'd only be a few hours and it turned into more like 7 hours. Yikes! We felt so bad but she assured us she had nothing else going on. So we paid her some goooood money for the unexpected hours she had to watch our kids. She's an awesome sitter so we want her to be willing to babysit again! 

We raced home. Rick took Ellie back home while I got the kids ready for the Christmas party we were going to that night with some friends from the ward. After getting them ready we met back up with Rick at the Schardt's home. They had invited us and the Jones' over for some games and homemade pizza. There were 10 kids between our 3 families so the kids just ran everywhere and had a blast playing together while the adults played a game of Settlers of Catan. It was so fun! 

We got home pretty late but still wanted to let the kids open our special present that we had planned for them to open on Christmas Eve. We got them each a Disney-themed present (I scored some cheap Disney stuff on the clearance rack at Walmart back in August and had saved it for Christmas!) and also wrapped up our Disney Magic bands/tickets. They were all soooo hyper from staying up way late at our friends house and then couldn't believe they got to open a present early. It was so fun to see their reactions about us getting to go on a family vacation to Disney World!!

All snuggled in our bedroom for Christmas Eve Night.

Garrett's stuff from Santa

Kimbri's stuff from Santa

Brenna's stuff from Santa

As for Christmas morning, it was sooo fun and relaxing to wake up and just have the kids open presents and all be together as a family. I'm so grateful that even though Rick had to work on the actual Christmas day, that we were still able to have the day before off and celebrate as a whole family. It was perfect! Here are the photos from Christmas morning:

Gma & Gpa Haycock sent these for Kimbri.
They are a huge hit!

I think Brenna was more concerned about getting her
morning sippy cup of milk than opening presents, ha!

Garrett had a grumpy face... sometimes he
hates getting his picture taken and sometimes he loves it.
I guess this was a "he hates it" time.

Our Christmas morning!

Using their silly straws to drink their milk.

They were running back and forth between the
kitchen and family room together.

Brenna testing out her new bouncing ball.

The Stone's gave us a new Mickey Mouse waffle/pancake
maker for Christmas so we had to test it out!

Rick really wanted a box of chocolates so we found a HUGE one
for him. I think he liked it :)

Santa brought bikes for the older 2 kids and
Brenna was jealous so we brought in Kimbri's
old bike for her to feel included in the bike fest :)

Look at the sneaky face! She found some Christmas
candy and had been sneakily eating it, hahaha!

On actual Christmas day, when Rick was working, we made cookies and took them in to daddy at the hospital. I think he was totally surprised!! We made extra plates for him to put in the lounge for anybody else having to work on Christmas, to hopefully brighten up their day. It was fun to see daddy at work, even if it was only for a few minutes. 

The beautiful sunset on our way back from the hospital.

We also hit 100 miles on our new car on the way
back so I of course had to send Rick a pic. We'll
obviously never see it that low again!