Christmas Eve is my favorite day of the year. It doesn't hurt that it's my birthday, but I especially look forward to the afternoon portion, after all the birthday stuff is over. I love preparing our special dinner with the whole family together in the kitchen. And eating it together. We had Brother Grove over this year to enjoy it with us.
After dinner we got jammies on, frosted a few cookies, an got comfy for my favorite part of the evening - the Christmas story from the scriptures and our family gift exchange by the light of the Christmas tree. It's such a cozy, special time. The story went pretty well this year. The kids took turns putting up our nativity blocks as they heard them mentioned in the reading.
Then we exchanged gifts. We drew names this year, so each person got a gift for one other person in the family. I really enjoyed watching Bryn prepare for it. She worked like a dog doing "quarter jobs" to save up enough to buy a doll for Leah that she'd seen in the grocery store. And Leah loves it, just like Bryn knew she would.
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| A doll for Leah from Bryn. A new drawing journal and some pens for Bryn from Leah. |
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| An alarm clock and bubble gum for Addison from Dad. |
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| Santa called just before bed! We asked the kids what he said and all we could really get out of them was, "ho ho ho!" |
Christmas morning we actually got to sleep in until about 7:30, which was a big surprise!
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| Ready to go see if Santa came! |
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| He came! He came! |
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| Stockings first! Addison was thrilled to get a genuine nutcracker and some mixed nuts in his stocking. That's been an obsession of his for a while. |
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| Leah was kind of grumpy, so she got to chill while we all got breakfast ready. She'd thrown up a few times two nights before, and I think she was still trying to get over the bug. (Nate has no mercy. We must eat before we even touch the presents.) |
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| The loot! |
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| Bryn asked Santa for a small penguin that is hard, and she got her wish. He also brought her a bird book (about penguins) just like she wanted! |
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| A jungle exploring set. |
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| A cute little dog that walks and barks. |
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| A birdhouse with birds that sing. |
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| And Legos!!! Addison has been begging for Legos for months. Way to deliver, Santa. |
We really enjoyed relaxing and playing together all day on Christmas. There are very few days that we go almost all day in our jammmies around here. It's nice to do it once a year. We partied all day long as a family and the day after, we headed to St. George to be with Nate's folks over the weekend.
Merry Christmas!
What a terrible dad, making his kids eat breakfast before opening presents! Ha! Sounds just like Nate when he was a kid.
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