Christmas

For having the longest time possible between Thanksgiving and Christmas, the time really flew by!  We were busy, busy, busy.  I have a lot of catching up to do and I do not plan on going in chronological order.  But, just to keep me on track I plan on posting about
*Thanksgiving
*Utah Symphony
*Katie Anne's 12-12-12 birthday
*Sledding
*Random things
*John's birthday
*Christmas, extended family
*Christmas, our family

Let's start with that one, shall we?

In the photograph department I fell quite short.  On the upside I totally enjoyed the day!  But I get ahead of myself...

Christmas Eve found our little family celebrating together.  I baked all day...goodie plates (to be delivered to the few I didn't get out on my first baking day!), cinnamon rolls for Christmas morning breakfast (I'll try to remember to post that recipe because they were delish and easy peasy), and prepping for dinner.  We decided on a dinner that every single one of us love and devour.  Shredded beef tacos in home fried shells.  Yeah, they were super good.

On Christmas Eve we played "The Game", opened pajamas (insert photo here if there was one), and read the Christmas story out of Luke and Matthew.  We carried the stash of presents to put under the tree.  We watched a short video about the birth of Christ called Joy to the World, and sent the kids to bed.  Santa eventually came, though we wouldn't know anything about it since we hung up our Santa Blocker 3000, a large blue tarp that blocks our view of the Christmas room until after breakfast.  I did sneak this peak...

The kids read stories while we finished up the morning cooking...

It was worth the wait!

For breakfast we ate cinnamon rolls, toast, grapefruit, bananas, scrambled eggs, sausage, chocolate milk, and eggnog.  We eat first, following my growing up traditions. 

Jane turned over baby Jesus on the last advent calendar, making the arrival of Christmas official.

Then the kids lined up...

 

This was the best picture I could get.  They were all jumping up and down and going crazy while John removed the Santa Blocker.  Then away we went...

John got up at 4:00, that's a.m. folks, to finish his special gifts.  He made each of the kids a music box.  The girls have little drawers in theirs making them little jewelry boxes.  The boys have a larger box divided into sections making them perfect for a collection.  All 4 play Pachabel's Canon.  Here is a pic of them all...

 

and how Katie Anne felt about it...

And that's it for pics, friends.  We had a great rest of the morning opening gifts and having fun playing with those gifts.  We later went to see my sister, Chris, then onto Stacy's where we saw more family and enjoyed a {really} nice spread of food.  We came home after a while and lazed around until some of the Jardine kids came over to play games.

All in all I would call this a pretty nice Christmas.  I somehow managed to avoid my traditional last minute binge shopping where I buy things I think my kids need or they won't have a nice Christmas and you know what?  They had a nice Christmas.  In fact, so did I!