Christmas themed breakfast and tree party

This morning I hosted a breakfast for my family.  I wanted to do something special while my nephew was in town for Thanksgiving, because this year he will be with his mom for Christmas.  The kids wore their Christmas pajamas (unfortunately Phoebe couldn't join us this year) for the breakfast.  Evan made the food and the kids had fun decorating gingerbread man/girl shaped pancakes.  We had hot cocoa fixings out and everything decorated.  Each kid got a bucket with treats and a Christmas pillow case that I made (embroidering the names took forever!).  The kids had a lot of fun helping Graesen decorate his little tree and doing some little Christmas crafts.  I think we may have to do this again next year :)

Tonight we headed to my grandparents' house for the annual tree decorating party.  We actually don't decorate the tree at the party anymore, because we have four little ones who would get too wild.  We do, however, enjoy our favorite appetizers and treats.  The kids also got advent playmobile sets from my mom, each family got a Christmas house from my grandparents, and the kids got little gift bags with coloring books and treats from my aunt.  (As you can see from the pictures, we came to the conclusion that there was no way the kids would be able to just get one toy out of their playmobile sets each day, so they just opened them all at once.)  We had a great time!  It is a night I always look forward to each year.