Christmas 2024

We spent Christmas at home this year, which is always nice. With my job now I can actually be home for a good piece of their break which gives us time to do things. This year Taylor's parents came to visit in the days leading up to Christmas and the Spears and Gma Cheryl can a couple days after. It was good family time.

Corban decorating his tree for his ornaments

Of course hot chocolate is much needed

Gabriel decorating his tree for his ornaments

Corban's Cub Scout Troop was in the Blacksburg parade. It was so incredibly cold that day that part of me wanted him to ask to stay home, but he really wanted to go. They all had hand warmers and hot chocolate to keep toasty. I walked along with them this year and we had a lot of fun.

Roanoke Holiday Pops concert

Taylor sporting his amazing "Elf" jacket

A house very close to us has very elaborate lights that play to music off of a radio station broadcast from the house. They have a spot for taking pictures and if you show up at the right time the man who owns the house sports his Santa suit and takes pictures.

Corban's teacher graduated from college after the first semester of school (she's technically been a student teacher for the fall, but that just meant that various staff members from school sat in on some of her lessons). She wore a sash with the handprints of each kid in Corban's class to her graduation ceremony.

Corban played one of the wisemen in the school Christmas production. The three wisemen had a fun time wandering around the sanctuary pretending to be lost.

Decorating cookies and putting together a kit of gingerbread houses:

Brothers playing checkers at Cracker Barrel

Learning how to play solitaire from Pop Pop

Since we didn't have another night that really worked, we did our night of camping by the tree on Christmas Eve. I'm not sure how much sleep anyone got but that's ok. We watched a Home Alone movie and then went to sleep. Then it was stockings and presents shortly after waking up.

The boys only had one present from us under the tree. They were large bags so they each decided to carry them like Santa. Inside was a new suitcase and Disney Magic Bands for the trip we surprised them with for February. They didn't get as outwardly excited as 4 years ago, but over the course of the day they started asking more and more about what we were going to do and about rides. It was a slow building excitement. It would have been more fun to tell them the day before we left like last time, but with being older they needed time to get make up work together and plan for missing a week of school.

Playing the new Wii game from Grandma Cheryl:

Waffle House!

In the evening we had an Iranian couple from church over and enjoyed talking with them and having an Iranian dessert.

The boys got Taylor a little something at the Big Lots going out of business sale

And then it was cousin time. They had a couple days of basically playing at our house with their cousins. All the girls took a trip to the mall to shop for shoes at one point. Aunt Stephanie helped me pick out new glasses. They always have fun hanging out with this crew.

We left the tree up longer this year than usual, but having the lights in the morning and evening was just so peaceful. Right after Christmas we had several snow days so it was really an extended break.