We ate our "traditional" Christmas meal on Christmas Eve (ham, homemade rolls, potato salad, deviled eggs, & celery stuffed w/cheese & peanut butter). I try to find a day in the week before Christmas that isn't too busy so I can make the dinner without feeling "stressed" & having the mess to clean up.
After driving (Brienna drove) around town looking at the Christmas lights, the kids opened their sibling gifts on Christmas Eve. I loved how all of them were excited about what they received and what they gave.
And I also love that they only have the 1 present to enjoy for the evening.
We also required that all the gifts needed to be homemade. Then we watched "Mr. Kruger's Christmas" & the kids all camped out in one bedroom. They were all in bed by 10 pm!
Our Christmas stockings all filled & Santa left us some presents.
Christmas morning--the boys set their alarm & got up at 4. They watched a movie & then about 7, we all got up and watched "The Nativity" (about 3 minutes) & I listened to the Mormon Tabernacle Choir's Christmas songs (all on the "Mr. Kruger's Christmas dvd) while we opened presents.
Emmalee's gift from Santa.
We were only going to open our Santa gift(s) & go through our stockings before we ate our breakfast (Rusty makes omlettes every Christmas morning)--but it was early enough that we ended up opening all of the presesnts.
Ben was thrilled--a Scooby-Doo puzzle from Santa!
And Callum now has enough spy gear to be a detective!
Santa's gift to the family.
Although this pictures is blurry, I had to include it because you can't beat the happiness on Ben's face--all because he found a "huge" piece of wrapping paper! While we were opening presents, Ben would go around and gather all the wrapping paper to stuff in a garbage bag--and we didn't even have to ask him. So when we were done opening presents, there wasn't much of a mess (at least from wrapping paper).
We ate the delicious omlettes Rusty made us, then went to chruch at 10 am. I played the organ & "sang" in the choir (as I played the piano). It was a good day at church. Then we headed home to actually see everything that everyone received for Christmas & to pack for our trip to Wyoming on Monday.
Callum showing off his long skinny johns.
And Benjamin had to show off his new jammies also.
