Painting fest…

Over Christmas vacation, we visited our favorite painting place with some of our favorite friends!

Silly girl…

Fletcher Family Extravaganza!

One of my favorite Christmas traditions is one we call our Fletcher Family Extravaganza! We started it the first year that we were dating and have kept it alive all these years.  This year we didn’t get to do it before Christmas – thanks to the brutal strep that hit Harper. :( Luckily, Trent’s birthday falls the day after Christmas – we were able to continue our tradition and celebrate him at the same time!

We always start with dinner at Campisi’s:

After a delicious dinner, we head to Starbucks to grab some yummy treats.  Then it is off to gorgeous Highland Parks to look at the lights:

One of my favorite days of the year!

Christmas Day!

Christmas morning this little guy waited very patiently on the stairs for us to deliver his little sister:

Trent carried her through the living room (covering her eyes) to the stairs so they could come down together:

But not before morning hugs! Someone was not quite awake yet:

Santa came and delivered exactly what they asked for!

We took a break for breakfast. Yummy, homemade cinnamon rolls!

This is one of my all-time favorite pictures now:

 

After lunch we got the best gift of all….SNOW!!!!!

Snow makes my heart happy.  It makes my sweet boy happy too (and my sweet girl, but from a distance…she is not a big fan of the cold):

We didn’t get much, but enough to call it a White Christmas!!! It was the first time in my life that it has snowed ON Christmas.  My kids are going to think we get snow like this all the time…little do they know. :)

We had a Mexican feast this year for our Christmas meal (Trent cooked his big meal for Christmas eve). This is definitely our new tradition! Yum!

Hud and I took frequent breaks to check on the snow:

After waking up from another long nap, Harper rested on the couch. Sweet baby was still not feeling like herself:

The boys enjoyed some legos:

After baths, we jammied up and headed out to look at some lights:

Despite Harper’s illness, it was a wonderful, peaceful, beautiful celebration of our Savior’s birth. :)

Christmas Eve!

Since baby girl was still not 100% on Christmas Eve, we decided to forego church this year. Since we would have gone to the 2:00 service, we would have had to cut Harper’s nap short.   That turned out to be a good decision because Harper napped for three plus hours that day.

My attempt to get pictures of the kids in their Christmas outfits:

     

We had both sides of our family over for Christmas Eve dinner. 

The kids table:

Then it was time for the kids to exchange presents…you can see Harper is starting to get her spirit back:

   

I have the FUNNIEST video ever of Harper. It is on Trent’s phone though, so I am going to have to post it later.

After getting our dose of medication in:

We went out in the (freezing!) cold to spread the reindeer food:

We were in such a hurry to get everyone to bed, we TOTALLY forgot to leave cookies for Santa!!! I was kicking myself for such a major mom fail, but then Hud woke up out of nowhere!  So like any good mom, I brought him downstairs to put the cookies out:

Good thing because Santa paid a visit not long after that ;)