December at Buckingham Palace was crazy to say the least. I just about lost my marbles, and lost my patience just a few times. December was when construction was no longer just outside the window. It was inside and insane. Our Christmas season was very different, but like Mom told me, "It's not YOUR birthday" meaning it's not all about me and what I envision Christmas should look like. Oh how I needed that reminder...DAILY! So, we start with some regular day to day pictures.
Nothing special about this one. I just like it. She rocked the Leia braid buns that day.
Clemson played in the ACC championship, so of course, we had to celebrate with a tailgate. Unfortunately our TV was in our room since the downstairs was blocked off for construction (only half, really, there was a plastic sheet running from the front door to the back, floor to ceiling...not exactly fun or easy). Fortunately we were replacing the carpet in a few days. We moved the party upstairs. It was a late night game, so it ended up being really fun. John was the only one of the kids who made it to see CLEMSON WIN!!!!!!!
The next day we rested :)
There is a Hispanic childcare worker at the Y that teaches the kids Spanish. She is fabulous. Jake won a prize for remembering so well. He LOVES it!
We went for a walk one day to stay out of the workers' way. We were so fortunate to have unbelievably nice weather while they were finishing inside, so we spent a lot of time outside. Jake decided to take the poop bag and use it as Superman's cape. He was NOT happy when Bo pooped and he lost his cape.
Here is the finished outside. The inside was finished Christmas Eve! Now that I look at old pictures of the outside it looks so awkward and unbalanced to me. We are beyond happy!
Finally everyone got to decorate for Christmas...and in their new rooms! This was a nice treat because we still couldn't get to the downstairs to decorate. At least with this it finally started to feel a bit like Christmas.
We also got to decorate gingerbread houses. Always a big hit!
John and Eve were very meticulous. Ellie was somewhat meticulous.
Will was hungry.
Jake dumped and at lots of sugar.
I'm guessing on these, but I'm pretty sure this is John's
Eve's
Ellie's
Jake's
Sometimes you just have to embrace the chaos and get messy. Messes can be cleaned and they are so worth the fun.
There's a story here. Two or three nights before Christmas I finally bit the bullet and stayed up super late wrapping everything. I was so tired when I was done, Buck graciously put everything under our bed. We don't put presents under the tree regularly because we don't want them constantly unwrapped. We had just moved into our new room. At this point the tree wasn't even really accessible to put gifts under. I made a big mistake. I took a shower (upstairs because the downstairs bathroom wasn't quite done). I came downstairs and my bedroom door was locked. I said, "Jake, what's going on in there?" "Nobody should see me!" he kept repeating. I finally got him to unlock the door and found this. It continued around the corner. I don't think he even saw anything, he was so excited to just unwrap things. It was all I could do not to laugh, and to firmly tell him that now he wouldn't have any surprises. He was devastated, poor thing. We'll know better next time!
Later that day he got caught eating the gingerbread houses. Needless to say, it was a long December.
Finally Christmas Eve we were able to decorate. OH! I forgot! We got a tree the weekend after Thanksgiving. Knowing we'd have to move it for drywall and paint, we just put lights on it. Good thing, because when they pulled the plastic off and moved it away from the wall to paint, spiders scattered everywhere. I was told both dozens and hundreds. Either way, the tree was immediately carried just out the door and in front of the front porch. We left it there. Of course we did the classy thing and plugged the lights in each night. At any rate, the cold came, and we didn't see any more spiders, so we brought the tree in on Christmas Eve to decorate. (A day or two after Christmas I was up in the morning and noticed spiders everywhere, so the tree was promptly undecorated and moved outside. Nothing a little vacuuming could take care of, though)
The stockings were hung by the chimney with care.
The elves decorated the tree
We recreated what is arguably the cheesiest Buckingham senior picture ever.
We made Christmas cookies
We had a great Christmas Eve buffet
Cheers!
Yes, it was a crazy December. Yes, I about lost it a few times. In the end we had a wonderful addition to our house that we are very grateful for, and a Savior that humbled himself from a position over all to come down to us as a baby, and that's pretty special. Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night.
