Christmas

We had a wonderful, peaceful Christmas this year.  Nate has been working a ridiculous amount of hours for the past couple of months and the few days leading up to Christmas were no exception.  He worked all day on Christmas Eve and then we all drove up to Grandma Laurie's for the traditional Christmas Eve dinner and hoopla.  All my brothers and sisters were there as well as our cousin Landon who recently moved to Salt Lake from California and wasn't able to go home for the holiday.
We had a delicious dinner complete with corn chowder, veggies, fruit, a cheese ball, summer sausage, li'l smokies, and several other yummy tidbits.  Then we all gathered near the Christmas tree.
My mom read the account of Christ's birth from the scriptures while the kids held up posters they had made of the shepherds, wise men, and the manger scene.  Then Jonah, Lilly, and Jayne each sang a Christmas song.  After that, it was present time!

Lilly, Aunt Sarah, and Jonah waiting for present time to start.

A very blurry shot of Jonah with his poster of the Nativity

Jonah, Lilly, & Jayne in their new PJ's from Grandma Laurie

After the exchange of gifts, we all hung around just chatting or playing until it was most definitely time to be headed home.  I was so grateful I'd done all my wrapping ahead of time, because we didn't get home until almost 10pm.  The kids were in their pajamas, we set out cookies and milk for Santa along with some oats for the reindeer and then herded the kiddos off to bed.
Our Christmas morning was a bit different this year.  Since Christmas fell on a Sunday, we had church services that morning at 9:00am.  Rather than getting everyone up at the crack of dawn to do presents before church, we opted to save the presents until after we got home.  We hung a curtain to block the view of the living room so the kids wouldn't be too tempted to just dive in.  They had no problem waiting.  They didn't even wake up until almost eight o'clock, so it was pretty easy to just get everyone dressed and ready and out the door without much fuss.  The kids understood that we were celebrating the birth of Christ, and what better way to do that than to go to church and worship for an hour before delving into the gifts?  
When we got home, we all changed into some comfortable clothes and then opened presents.  The kids were very good this year and it showed.  They love all their gifts and spent the better part of the day playing with new toys and reading new books. 

Waiting to head into the living room where the presents are

Lilly is very happy about her Tinker Bell movie.  I think we've watched three or four times this week already.

Jonah's T-Rex pillow pet put him right to sleep!=)

Jayne loves playing with the new Play-Doh cake making station.  That's another one we've had out every day this week. 

After gifts, we made a big breakfast, which actually turned out to be lunch by the time we got to it.  We used Nate's new waffle-baker that he got from Santa.  Nate has this thing about waffles.  He only likes the big square kind with the tiny little squares.  We had been using his mother's old waffle iron for years before it finally bit the dust and then we just never seemed to be able to find anything other than the Belgian waffle irons with the big squares in them.  But this year we discovered the perfect waffle baker from Black and Decker.  So we enjoyed delicious waffles, eggs, sausage and fruit for our Christmas breakfast. 
We spent the rest of the day relaxing together.  We all enjoyed a much needed afternoon nap and then took a drive to look at the Christmas lights around the neighborhood before bed. 
All in all, it was a wonderful holiday!  Now on to the New Year!