{"id":6385,"date":"2019-12-31T10:51:57","date_gmt":"2019-12-31T15:51:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/themaddlife.com\/?p=6385"},"modified":"2019-12-31T10:51:57","modified_gmt":"2019-12-31T15:51:57","slug":"chrismukkah","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/themaddlife.com\/?p=6385","title":{"rendered":"Chrismukkah"},"content":{"rendered":"

This year Hanukkah started the Sunday before Christmas so the holidays overlapped. \u00a0Not my preference, but clearly I have no say in the matter.\u00a0 For the first night of Hanukkah, we went to my parents where we celebrated and ate latkes.\"\"Harper is still deathly afraid of fire so she goes in another room when we are lighting the menorah.<\/p>\n

Monday night we took our annual family pajama pictures in front of the tree, which were the girls Hanukkah presents from the prior night.\"\"I had just come home from a haircut after having gone 10 months without one. I had intended to go darker in color for a change\u2026the cut was not meant to be so layered!\u00a0 I\u2019m not the biggest fan\u2026but it will grow back. \u00a0Granted it is hard to notice my hair color when I have a triangle reflecting in the middle of my forehead!\"\"\"\" \"\"Someone whose name starts with E decided she wasn’t in the mood for silly family pictures. \u00a0We told her we would do a serious one next, but she had quickly escaped as she was not feeling our crazy antics.\u00a0\"\"Tuesday was Christmas Eve. We captured pictures in front of the tree in less than a rushed fashion than usual. \u00a0I can’t believe how old and grown up they are becoming!\"\" \"\" \"\" \"\" \"\" \"\" \"\" \"\"Not sure what was so funny, but apparently something had these girls giggling!\"\" \"\" \"\"The self timer normally does the trick, not this year…Justin was scalped!\"\" \"\" \"\"We somehow made it to the 5:00 VPC Church service at 4:30, a record for us for sure!\u00a0 We indulged at PF Chang\u2019s for dinner for the 5th<\/sup> year in a row!\u00a0 We debated switching it up due to the not so great experience we had last year, but the $25 gift card we had (from the less than stellar customer service) coupled with the fact that it really is a special night out since we only go there on Christmas Eve led us back to try one more time before we were ready to call it quits.\u00a0 Fortunately, dinner and service were good so we will likely be back next year.<\/p>\n

Tuesday night we all stayed up a little too late before getting to bed. \u00a0Let’s be funny.\"\" \"\"No, let’s be serious.\"\"\"\" \"\"Emerson was the first to get up at 7:20 the following morning and wanted nothing more to wake her sisters up.\u00a0 She patiently waited\u2026a little Netflix time helped her patience!\u00a0 By 8:05, both Avery and Harper had woken up and we made our way downstairs!\"\"Santa was especially generous this year with his stockings!\u00a0 At least for the girls\u2026.Mommy and Daddy\u2019s stockings could have been a little plumper, but I guess Santa had priorities.<\/p>\n

Santa also brought the girls some great presents.\u00a0 Nothing too extravagant, but a combination of things that were on their list and things he thought they would enjoy.\"\"\"\" \"\" \"\" \"\"Breakfast was healthy chocolate muffins, healthy lemon muffins, scrambled eggs, fresh berries, and lots of bacon! \u00a0\"\" \"\" \"\"\"\"Justin and I prepared some of the food Christmas Eve after the girls went to bed so we could enjoy Christmas morning with the girls over spending tons of time in the kitchen.\u00a0 Breakfast was delicious.\u00a0 It was small though in terms of people.\u00a0 This is the first year since we have been in our new house where Christmas has been just the five of us.\u00a0 Karolin joined our family before Harper even turned one and since then we have had Mila and Larissa join our family and spend multiple Christmases with us.\u00a0 It was weird truthfully in a way\u2026.kind of realizing that we are truly in the next phase our journey.<\/p>\n

After breakfast, we sat around the tree and opened family presents.\u00a0 The absolute best part of family presents were the girls gifts to me and Justin and to one another.\u00a0 Justin and I debated taking the girls to get presents for one another; we decided not to primarily because Justin and I would need to carve out the time to do so, and sadly it wasn\u2019t something we wanted to add to our plate.\u00a0 We didn\u2019t tell the girls we weren\u2019t going to not do this, we just didn\u2019t do it.\u00a0 THEY took it upon themselves to make their own gifts by regifting, making coupon books, making cards, and giving their own money.\u00a0 I could not have been prouder of them. \u00a0They made individual gifts and teamed up to make joint gifts. They fight more often than I like and sometimes I wonder if they really love one another.\u00a0 Their gifts to one another were so caring and filled with love.\u00a0 Emerson made coupon books for both Avery and Harper which consisted of helping them with their homework, taking their dishes over to the sink, and making their beds. \"\" \"\"\"\"Avery gave everyone in the family $5 cash.\"\" \"\"Avery also bought a stuffed animal for Harper and Emerson the day before Christmas, when she happened to be the only kid home and have the opportunity to go to the drugstore with Justin. \u00a0She knew Emerson and Harper may not have had the opportunity to do the same, and she was okay with that.\u00a0 Avery and Harper regifted some of their toys, bracelets, and made some new bracelets for one another.\u00a0 Harper made a card demonstrating her love to the entire family.\"\" \"\" \"\"Honestly, my heart was so happy that they secretly took it upon themselves to be creative and make gifts for one another for Christmas because they cared!<\/p>\n

The girls big Christmas present from Justin and I was a trip to Philadelphia. We gave the girls a card that said “pack your bags, we are going to Philly” tomorrow!<\/p>\n

The afternoon was spent going for a family walk in the neighborhood, playing with gifts, preparing a delicious dinner of pork chimichurri where Grandma and Grandpa joined us, and packing for our trip. \u00a0It really was a great Christmas…M-unit was small this year, but our love big.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This year Hanukkah started the Sunday before Christmas so the holidays overlapped. \u00a0Not my preference, but clearly I have no say in the matter.\u00a0 For the first night of Hanukkah, we went to my parents where we celebrated and ate … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6385","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/themaddlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6385","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/themaddlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/themaddlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/themaddlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/themaddlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6385"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/themaddlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6385\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/themaddlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6385"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/themaddlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6385"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/themaddlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6385"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}