Christmas at the Bancrofts

A short recap of the past few days....I actually didn't take enough pictures. I did take a lot of video however. It was crazy, it was fun, it was exhausting, and now, it's over. And I am suddenly L-A-Z-Y!!! I was moving 100 mph for too long and now my body is saying STOP please! So I'm listening. The past 2 nights I was in bed by 10:30 and up after 8:00!!! Unheard of....
Here are my little ones trying to settle down on Christmas Eve. We always give them new PJs that night. They love it. Here they are modelling. That night wasn't as relaxing and idyllic as I'd hoped. I spent the day baking baking baking and cleaning and wrapping and basically trying to pull together all the last minute things. Thankfully Mark made a Second trip to the grocery store for me. It was packed so that saved me a few hrs. I worked hard to re-bake my Mom's famous homemade rolls and I think I dare say the 2nd time was much much better. The little dough pellets from batch one were replaced with something a bit more edible. At least my family was polite and ate them at dinner on Friday. I had a special Christmas eve dinner planned for just the 5 of us. Scallops, rice, haddock, a nice salad and well..that's it. Nothing too fancy but a nice quiet meal. We also planned to attend Christmas eve Mass at 6:00. That is about the worst time possible for a young family ....if you ask me. It's Right at dinner. My boys are Excited to go to bed on Christmas eve but that really got in our way. If we ate before church it would be like an afternoon snack but after was too late. We still ate after. Church was fine but my boys were ansty. Nick took a nap on my lap so I had to stay in my seat the whole time....I felt silly while everyone else stood. I'm still glad we went. We got home and immediately tracked Santa on NORAD. He was in Ireland and a slight degree of panic went over the kids. I assured them we were all set. But the frenzy had begun. They saw lights in the sky...heard bells...it was fun. We sprinkled the reindeer food they had made on the front lawn, put cookies by the fireplace, and inhaled my nice meal. Oh well. We headed upstairs to bed and to read Twas the Night before Christmas at a pace that would have made Rudolph shutter. It was almost 9 p.m and the kids were Anxious to get all 5 of us to bed so Santa could come!!!
Here they are.....

My fruit pizza for Christmas appetizers....Marni's recipe! thanks Marn!!! So yummy!

Christmas morning with the 5 of us was Fun! The kids were super excited with every gift. They loved their stockings. They were fairly patient watching their brothers and parents open their gifts. This is later in the day with my parents ( mom in background), brother and his family here...

Mom and Dad got me a cool gift....a huge mounted poster of me on the Bike in Lake Placid. Fun!!!

Last night...Nick modelling his 2nd set of new pjs.

this is pretty much all we've done for 2 days. It's 10:00 and none of us are dressed. Our beds aren't made. We just ate. They are totally enthralled with their legos and erector sets. Tomorrow is back to the 4:33 a.m. alarm. But for now...we rest.