The Walkers: Walker Christmas 2014 Part I

We had a GREAT Christmas season this year! I am actually splitting this post in to two parts because I took so many pictures. :)

The kids were pretty excited when I pulled out the Christmas bins!

Decorating their individual trees :)

(Ever since Halloween, Malea would wake up every morning and put on her Elsa dress. Most mornings she would have it on by the time I saw her for the first time every day. It is so cute :))

The kids helped me decorate our family tree, they did a pretty good job! As you can see most of the ornaments were on the lower half so I just evened it out and it looked great!

One of my favorite Christmas decorations :)

Took a break from decorating to take a little family selfie!

Here's a cute pic of the kids playing in the first big snowfall this winter! It is so nice having stairs to our deck so the kids can play in the back yard!

We decided it would be fun to announce the pregnancy to our families with a little photo ornament. We put our most recent family picture on one side and then a picture of the ultrasound on the other. We gave one to each of my parents and Keith's parents (and kept one for ourselves of course :)). We mailed the ornament to Keith's parents but didn't tell them anything, we wanted to see how fast they figured it out. Turns out they didn't even pull it out of the package until a few hours later! It was kind of funny.

Our Elf on the shelf "Max" was so silly this year! Here's just a few pics of some of the crazy things he did:

This isn't really Christmas related, but I'll share anyway that Malea lost her first tooth! It's been loose for a while and finally one day it was hanging on by a thread so I took a tissue and pulled it out. She was so excited to put it in her little tooth holder and wait for the tooth fairy!

The tooth fairy came and even left Malea a note! It said "Congrats on losing your first tooth Malea! Be sure and take really good care of your permanent tooth coming in! Love, The Tooth Fairy"

We also took the kids to see Santa at the Riverwoods Mall! They were both SO excited to see him but when it was their turn in line they both got super shy! Neither one cried though, that was a first ;)

Christmas jammies!

Malea in her cute new Christmas outfit. I didn't buy Isaac a new shirt this year because his shirt from last year still fit (he tends to fit in his clothes forever)

Malea decided she wanted to do Christmas cards for all her classmates :) It was so cute. She worked on them for a long time. In her class each student takes a turn being the "special helper" and it was her turn the next day so she really wanted to hand them out that day (she also wanted to pick out a cute outfit....it was so cute!!!). So she and I stayed up late the night before and finished them. She is a very sweet and thoughtful girl!

This year for neighbor gifts I saw this cute idea on Pinterest where you give each person a roll of wrapping paper and some tape with this little poem:

"All November you've been shopping,

Barely sleeping, hardly stopping,

Now it's late, you're in a scrape,

Out of paper, out of tape,

Hope this wrap helps save the day!

Have a Happy Holiday!"

(I did not make up this poem :))

Isaac came Christmas shopping with me one day while Malea was at school and we just had to stop at Kneaders to get a festive sugar cookie!

We had two Christmas parties back to back one weekend, one for the Martindale/Oldroyd side and one for the Nunes/Martindale side. I will post pics of those parties in Part II but here were some cute gift baskets I put together for my siblings and their spouses (it had a $5 movie, some popcorn, soda and treats).

For the Martindale/Oldroyd Christmas party they have a gingerbread house contest every year. I decided to enter this year. I have never built a gingerbread house from anything but a kit so it was harder than I expected but I was up for the challenge! The kids also got to make little ones that night too.