Christmas at Home

In keeping with our desire to spread out Christmas we did our family presents to each other on Christmas Eve Morning.  

We had been struggling to get our kids to give us ideas for Christmas.   We are not really “things” people.  The only one who had suggestions was SpinCycle, who wanted more Hot Wheels.   We didn’t want to just buy things for the sake of buying them either. 

Kilo and I had the great idea of instead of buying things we plan a cool trip.   We have talked about taking all the kids to Disneyland for almost a year but had been waiting due to some health things SpinCycle was working on.   We decided it was time to stop waiting and just go. 

Our original plan was to have the kids open bags that were all packed and tell them we were leaving that night.  Then we found that is such a popular idea that the parks are all super crowded till after school starts again in January.   So instead we decided to skip the first 4 days back to school and have a great vacation.  

We found an awesome deal on a hotel that actually sleeps 6 people.   Yeah!  Then we found the City Pass.  That gives you 3 days in Disneyland, a day at Universal Studios, and a day at SeaWorld for one low price.  Christmas was planned.   Add in some Christmas money from my Grandparents and Kilo’s Grandparents and we also got a day at Lego Land.

Christmas Pajamas

Since we still wanted them to open things for Christmas Kilo and I made matching shirts for 3 days of our trip and one of their favorite Disney character. 

Everyone got one like this

The girls got Minnie

 

Everyone got Lego Ninjago for Lego Land

The boys got Mickey

I love Winnie the Pooh

Mellissa got Jasmine

CJBuddy got Sully and Mike Wisouski

SpinCycle got Lightening McQueen and Mater

Kilo got Wall-E

Erlop got Tangled

I had decided that I wasn't going to carry everyone's stuff on the trip.  So we got everyone a backpack to wear for the trip.  

The final thing they got from us was bank accounts.   They older kids keep saying they need somewhere to put their money so they don’t spend it all.  So we opened a savings account for all the kids.  It came with a cool penny bank that we filled with coins for them to use.  

The day they got the gift the younger kids were not super excited about the trip.  They have never gone so had a hard time understanding what they got.   The older kids were super excited.