Christmas Eve/Christmas at our house

Christmas this year was difficult for me. I am used to setting a budget (Yes- I have a spreadsheet to keep track)- but I pretty much go a little over budget on almost everyone. Luckily- we have a holiday saving account which was a big help this year, but we not only had to reduce our budgets (Mainly Paige's, and ours), but I had to learn how to creatively stick to them. I want to spoil people so I really learned how to stretch that dollar. Ultimately we had a great Christmas and I think I did a good job at doing just that.

Christmas eve we ended up at my parents house in the late afternoon while we waited for the Boston Pidgeons to call us on Skype. They all gather at Christmas eve, and last year we started a gift exchange over the internet. It can be difficult at times, but it sure is fun. And my dad got the computer to show on the big screen so it was way easier to see everyone this year.

We ended up with a $25 Home Depot GC which Justin was, of course, thrilled with. But I had the Night Before Christmas book from Hallmark, read and recorded by my Nana and it was taken from me. I am glad that Maddy and the next little O'donnell with get to enjoy it, but am sad that Paige will not.

We went home and put Paige to bed. Santa came and dropped off a few stocking and a nice toddler size trampoline (Thank-you Craigslist!).Paige saw it first thing and tried to go and jump before we even took off the stockings!
We opened up stockings and some presents for Paige.



After we had fun playing around and enjoying the massive amount of stuff we already seemed to have, we headed over to my parents house. Chelsie wasn't feeling that good, but she was a trooper. We enjoyed opening more presents including a Nintendo Wii for Justin & Me!!!

Justin really loved this License plate!

We had a nice relaxing afternoon in our PJ's. Set up the Wii.