We had a nice Christmas. We have our traditions down to a science so I feel like my Christmas blog post is becoming mundane, but celebrating Christmas never feels mundane because the birth of Christ will never be something that feels boring.
Throughout December we did an advent activity where we read scripture, sang songs and watched Bible videos about Christ's birth.
For Christmas Eve we had the sister missionaries over. I was shocked when Kimball told me how much he enjoyed having them over last year and how he hoped we would make it a tradition. I guess we will! We ate in the family room and after dinner we acted out the Nativity. Our Mary and Joseph are getting younger as the big kids get older and the girls fight over who gets to be Mary! Now I just assign roles!
Our Mary and Joseph with Joseph being the donkey.
The sister missionaries were shepherds and Edie was their sheep.
Rebecah was an angel since she couldn't be Mary.
Kimball was a rather grumpy King Herod and we didn't get any pictures of the Wise Men.
Here is one more picture of our sweet Mary with her serene smile.
Joseph and the missionaries all left at the same time. Joseph was on-call Christmas Eve and we were just lucky that he could spend most of the day with us. He went to work and arrived home Christmas morning about 6 am. After he left for work the kids watched Frosty the Snowman and then I put the little ones to bed. The big kids started A Christmas Carol while I worked on making orange rolls for breakfast. About 9:00 I had the big kids help put out some of the presents and then I sent them to bed. Even with their help I was still up until 10:30 getting the rest of the presents out, the gifts from Santa ready and re-upholstering a chair that was Joseph's Christmas present.
Rebecah didn't sleep well Christmas Eve night. She was too excited. She heard Annika get up to use the bathroom around 5:00 and told Annika to come into my room and say "Merry Christmas" hoping that they could get up for the day. I told Rebecah I wasn't having that and they all needed to go back to bed! We don't get up at insane hours of the night to celebrate Christmas. It's not worth grumpy kids just to say we got up at 3:00 in the morning to open presents. I choose not to torture myself as a parent! The kids finally did go back to sleep and we got up at our usual 7:00 for presents.
Christmas morning! I love Christmas decorations, especially the lights and Nativities.
They just make me feel happy!!
These pictures aren't in any order:
Annika was SO excited about her Legos and her PJ Masks Owlette Glider.
I had the idea early last year to make Joseph a family history calendar. I had no idea it would take so many hours. I started in September and spent 3 weeks working on his calendar and spent 1-2 hours a day working on it. I easily spent 20 hours on it. I pulled the names and dates from Family Search and put them in a Shutterfly calendar. I put births, deaths and marriages and included pictures of the people who had events during each month. I was really excited to give Joseph this present, but also really nervous...one because I hoped I hadn't made any mistakes and two, because I wanted him to really like it. Joseph's love language is receiving gifts and he always puts thought into the gifts he gives me. It isn't my love language so I just want to know exactly what he wants so I can order it from Amazon. This year was a win though because he really liked the calendar because he knew I put a lot of thought, time and effort into it. I told him he couldn't write in the calendar though and even though the days will be off after 2019 I hope he keeps the calendar for future reference,
Edie finally understands the excitement about opening presents and she wanted to open every present whether it was hers or not! Joseph was very good about sharing presents with her and she was able to open a lot of the family gifts because as the youngest she didn't need many presents so she actually had the least! She was very excited about her Gecko Mobile!
She was so excited about this present even though it was a shirt for Joseph!
Rebecah in her new peacoat.
Santa brought Lincoln, Annika, and Edie hobby horses. They LOVE them. Lincoln's is actually a dinosaur and they make noise. I didn't even know it when I bought them!
Kimball's favorite NFL team is the Cleveland Browns. I"m not sure why, but I think it had something to do with the Browns's losing record last year 0-16 or something like that. Anyway, he has loved them for a few years so we decided to upgrade his bedding. He was SO excited. The icing on the cake is that the Browns actually won a few games this year and they aren't the worst team in the NFL anymore. GO Browns!!
Lincoln gave me a goofy smile, but he was very happy about his PJ Masks figurines.
He already has the cat car.
Our December leading up to Christmas was so busy that we didn't get around to decorating gingerbread houses so we decided to do it Christmas Day. The kids had a lot of fun with it and thanks to the famous Mary Berry I have learned some good gingerbread house tips like decorating the sides of the house before you put it together! The kids were too impatient to let the sides dry before putting the houses together, but it still worked.
We had a great Christmas and we are already mentally planning for next year when Joseph works on Christmas day. We might just have to open presents on Christmas Eve!
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