Elves in New York

I am soooo behind, we are going back to Christmas. We spent 10 days there but in the interest of catching everyone up I am going to post a whole lot of photos from the ten days all at once 🙂 So sit back and make yourselves comfy.

For Christmas this year we all loaded up in our rental car and headed to New York. We were very excited to spend the holiday with our family. An added bonus, two of our good friends from Manila were in New York at the same time. It was amazing to connect with them and for the kids to see their old friends.

First up, we had brunch with Ed, Phyllis, Maeve, Edward and Agnes at Sarabeth’s.

We also went to the Children’s Museum with Jackie, Marco, Devon and Tali. Added bonus, we went to Shake Shack after that, then the kids went to their apartment for a play date and the adults went to Gramercy Park Hotel for some wine, a pretty fantastic day!

For Christmas, we put on our Christmas pjs and got ready for Santa. We read some Christmas books and put everyone to bed so we could wrap all our presents, build kitchens and find some cookies to put out.

The kids were so excited to wake up and see all their presents.

Santa brought everything everyone wanted. Adam had asked for a skateboard but changed his mind two days before Christmas and asked for an elf on the shelf. Thankfully Santa was able to find the last elf on a shelf in New York. Adam was very excited!

Funny story, we watched the elf on a shelf movie the night before Christmas. The next day Adam accidentally touched the elf and he was super worried all day that the elf would lose its magic and not move (apparently if you touch the elf it loses its magic..eye roll here). He even wrote a sweet note to the elf saying he believed. Then of course, yup you guessed it, I totally forgot to move the elf (insert eye roll here at my stupidity). Thankfully I whipper up a note from the elf saying all was ok and his magic was not lost. Let’s all just be thankful that Adam got the elf after Christmas so my forgetfulness didn’t ruin Adam’s Christmas spirit. Also. thank you classmates at Adam’s elementary school who told Adam all about this elf that moves by itself (one last eye roll here and I’m done).

Malcolm wanted this dinosaur, which was also only available in one store in all of Virginia but Santa was able to get it and Malcolm was so happy.

Miral got a new play kitchen and loved it, but wasn’t happy when she wasn’t allowed on Adam’s skateboard.

We got Laurel a comfy new chair that her and Miral spent all week ‘sharing’.

The biggest hit of all though was Alexa. Adam has wanted one for the longest time and it is definitely the present the whole family loved the most. This photo is fuzzy but it shows the total joy that Adam had when he opened it.

Look who made it onto the skateboard (….in case you were wondering Miral usually ends up where she wants to be).

After all the presents were opened we got dressed up for a fun dinner with our family.

For their birthdays, Uncle Mj and Aunt Daf took the boys to see the Harlem Globetrotters and I babysat the girls. It was great to have time with these two peanuts. And the boys loved it!

This Christmas we were lucky enough to get to see Grandma Yuyu and also Aunt Sandra, Uncle Shawn, Roman, Isla, Grant and Tamer! They drove all the way from Detroit.