The Hill Family Blog: We Wish You a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Our elf, Lloyd Christmas, returned after Thanksgiving and kicked off the Christmas season! This year was a good one because since Christmas and New Years fell on the weekend, Dave and I both had two long weekends of no work back to back which made for lots of lounging in our pjs and playing with new toys and building lots and lots of Lego sets.

We started off by riding the Christmas train at Irvine Park. We had never done this before and were so pleasantly surprised at how much fun it was! We will definitely be doing it again next year. It was really cold and crazy windy when we went so hopefully next year will be better weather. The boys loved meeting Santa and riding the train through the tunnel of lights.

We decorated our house early this year because Great-Grandma came all the way from New York for a visit. We decorated cookies, went shopping, and spent time together as a big family. It was so much fun and we were sad to see her leave!

Waiting for Great-Grandma at the airport

Making Christmas cookies

The boys had fun school parties and Carter's class sang some songs at their Winter concert. Christmas eve we spent with our cousins and we were so thrilled to see snowy footprints from Santa by our fireplace on Christmas morning. He also left a glove and his glasses! We'll have to remember to return them next year!

Dave's favorite present was a new guitar

We had a blast watching Christmas movies this year. The classic "Home Alone" is now our boys' favorite and they giggle uncontrollably and now repeat lines from the movie. We love watching "Elf" so Torrey and I took Carter to see the musical. It was pretty cute and they even set up a candy bar for the kids to pack boxes full of candy to munch on throughout the show. Sugar high!

Last but not least... we ended 2016 on a high note with a little get-together with some friends. I told the boys they could stay up as long as they could... poor Archie made it till 11:30pm and crashed on the couch. He was so disappointed the next morning to discover we had done all the poppers without him! (And I felt terrible for not remembering to save him some!) Carter stayed up till 1:30am. He definitely takes after his night owl father because I am definitely not a night person. It was so cute to see Carter shout the countdown as this was the first year he ever made it past midnight.