Christmas Eve

Every Christmas Eve we had a tradition of going over to Grandma & Grandpa Wilson's house for dinner and a nativity and then Grandpa would play "Santa" and give all of the grandchildren a gift. Well last Christmas Grandpa past away the day before Christmas Eve. It was such a special memory that the Larsen family decided to keep the tradition going by having Eric's Dad play "Santa" for his own grandchildren. Of course the kids loved it and I hope it will become something very special to them as the years go on.

We still went to visit Grandma Wilson and participated in the nativity. It was crowded and dark so my pictures didn't turn out very good but I can just tell you that Tatum was one cute Shepard and Trey was a great Wise Man.

We ended the night singing some songs and listening to Grandma share some precious stories from her past. I filmed it and am so grateful for that tender moment to remember her when she is no longer with us.

Breakfast with Santa

The first part of this post was supposed to go with my last but I forgot, so here it is. Before we made gingerbread trains at Grandma's we all went to this cute little train in Lindon. It is this train you ride around a neighborhood with pictures of Christ and a stop in the middle to see the big man himself. These neighbors who put this together totally devote their time and homes to this great experience. Its all done by donation and it was such a fun thing to take the kids to do. And Santa's village was top notch :)

All of the grand-kids minus Hunter.

Our beautiful little Ellie May. She came in town the night before all the way from New York. 

The following Saturday Aunt Rachel got everyone in to have Breakfast with Santa. This was such a fun event and one I would love to do every year. Buddy the Elf was there to entertain everyone while we ate breakfast and waited for Santa ( he was fantastic!).

Poor Ellie was not happy. 

There were all sorts of activities for the kids including coloring, cookie decorating and face painting.

This was such a fun morning and the kids loved every minute of it!

Train Making

Every year it is a tradition at Christmas time to make gingerbread trains at Grandma Mary's house. She provides all of the decorations and each family gets to make a train to take home. Tatum was our master designer this year and I must admit it was a bit hard to just let him do his thing. It still turned out adorable and he was so proud of our train.

Trey has zero patience for creativity. He lost interest in about 2 minutes and then would just sneak back and grab some candy to eat.

Caught you :)

This look is Trey trying to get away with sneaking candy without being caught.

All finished!

It turned out so cute!

It took a lot of hard work and patience to complete this masterpiece but I am so grateful for these fun traditions and the memories my children will have for years to come.

Disneyland

When you spend 3 days at Disneyland you tend to have about 1 million pictures to go through. This was the last segment of our trip and I must say that 3 days is a long time! I think by the end of the second day we had seen and done everything possible. 

On the third day we got to go into the park an hour early with our passes. We hit up all of Fantasy land before the big crowds hit. It still was packed :( We really didn't have to wait in any lines the whole trip. We timed everything just right where we used fast passes on all the major rides and got to ride everything at least twice! 

Tatum's favorite ride was Tower of Terror and Trey's was "Cars 2". I must say they both have good taste because those are my favorites as well :)

Tatum got to do Jedi Training twice and fought Darth Vader both times.

We saw so many characters which made Trey so happy!

 

We saw all of the parades, which were so amazing!

 

We snuck Trey on a bunch of rides. He is just barely under 40 inches which is the minimum height on a huge amount of rides including Cars.  Funny story: I wanted Trey to go on Cars more than any other ride because he is so obsessed with McQueen. We tested his height out on a few rides that were 40 inches and some let him on and some didn't. When they didn't we would just skip in line further down and tell him to stand on his tip toes and it always worked. Well we didn't want to take any chances with the cars ride, so Eric stuffed his shoes with paper towels. When he got to the front they checked his height and he barely made it! And it was so worth it to see his smile on that ride :)

 

Bad picture but look how small Trey is in the front, you can barely see him!

 

Tom Sawyer Island, pretty sure its not called that anymore.

 

Another funny story. The whole 3 days Trey kept talking about wanting to go on the Mickey Mouse ride. Those of you who have been to Disneyland know there isn't a Mickey Mouse ride, just his house. So on the last day I took him on the rockets in California Adventure and it wasn't until we were high in the air across from the Ferris wheel that i realized what the Mickey Mouse ride was. He was happy when we finally figured it out :)

Tatum loved the rapids and went on it 3 times.

What a wonderful (tiring) trip! Its kind of sad that this will be our last Disneyland trip for a while, due to a new baby :)