Christmas Eve & Morning

This year we headed for Vegas on Christmas Eve. Matt's work party was supposed to be the morning of the 24th but at the last minute they changed it to the previous Friday in order to give the employees more time off with their families. But by the time the party had changed flights were to expensive to change so we decided to spend the weekend relaxing before heading out on Christmas Eve. Because we were flying we decided to leave most of Matt and I's big stuff home so we didn't have to travel with it. Matt got a new hand gun with some fun accessories and I got a new sewing machine and a sewing box(mine had seen a better day and was my great grandma's machine before it was mine). I have already sewn some sleeping bags for the girls on it and it seems to work alot better than the one I have before.

We flew out about 5pm and got to Vegas just in time for some gag gift exchange, dinner, and games. Then the not so fun started. For some reason the girls REALLY struggled. Gracie was up most of the night crying(which has never happened in her whole life) and of coarse because we were all sleeping in one room it ment Hallie was up a lot also. I tried my best to find quiet spots so we didn't disturb anyone but that was near impossible with everyone there. I was extremely frustrated and even more so when Hallie came down the stairs in the middle of the night when we were setting out Santa stuff. Fortunately she was mostly asleep and hardly noticed as we quickly ushered her back to bed. Gracie finally fell asleep for longer than 20 minutes about 4am so needless to say we slept in Christmas morning and got up about 9am. Hallie was excited to see what Santa brought her.

Growing up we always opened our stocking presents first usually while we waited for Grandma and Grandpa Norr to get there to spend the rest of Christmas with us. So in true Norr fashion Hallie opened all her stocking stuff. Most the adults sat around eating breakfast before opening many of our presents. Hallie was really the only one dying to open gifts. Rigs didn't really seem to get it or care and Gracie slept til almost 11am.

New Panties

Paint Markers

Popup Circus Tent

Hallie thought her circus tent was a perfect princess castle. She told us at one point if we needed her she could be reached in her castle...oh to be a kid again

Hallie has been asking for a purple Tangled dress since her birthday party and she finally got it...this is what she wore for most of the day

Then she opened the gift my mom made for her it was a beautiful princess dress made to look like Ariel from Little Mermaids wedding dress complete with veil.

I love the picture with Hallie in her dress partially because Rigs is totally photo-bombing it of coarse he wouldn't smile until I wasn't trying to take a picture of him

About that time Gracie decided to be part of the world again but she wasn't sure what all the fuss was about

Santa brought Hallie a barbie set

Once Graie got some food in her she was a little more interested in what was going on.

She spent some time opening Christmas gifts with just about everyone

Cindy & Jerry(my dad's cousin) joined us since their families were far away. Jerry was great to play tea party/picnic with her.

Gracie in her new pom pom hat

That afternoon while reading stories Hallie's head started to bob and then st practically fell over(she had completely fallen asleep. I moved and laid her down, she continued to sleep there for a couple hours in the middle of the house...she must have been so tired!

Once again with the photo-bombing...thanks mom for the laugh

Then we made gingerbread houses my mom had gone after Halloween and bought the clearance ones they ended up a lot cuter because they were all different styles and not just square with a roof and bonus they were pre-built so we just had to decorate

I think this is such a cute picture of Rigs when I ask him to smile he usually doesn't but not this time

Hallie really likes her paint markers they are basically a water paint that built into a marker type thing so you don't need separate water, brush, and paints

And here it is after all the hard work and good time visiting

And that is our Christmas in a nut shell. It was fun to be all together but this will probably be our last year traveling for Christmas it was hard. We left some of our Christmas home since we didn't want to pack everything there and back. After we all opened our gifts we basically packed them back up and it made me sad that we didn't spread them out and play with them more(future post) I think we will now revert to how we were raised by rotating houses for a Christmas Eve party and Christmas dinner. We will just invited my parents to come with the younger kids and hopefully they will be willing what our grandparents did growing up. They would rotate whose house they slept at on Christmas eve and on Christmas day travel around to see what everyone got. I love that my sisters now live close enough that we can do that because after this year I'm not traveling again