We had a wonderful Christmas season! It was busy, but not as crazy as it has been in other years. My mom hosted the majority of the parties, which made it such a great for me to just go! Some of the Christmas traditions that we enjoyed this year:
* Brown Christmas party (hosted by my mom)
* Opening a Christmas book each night of the month to read before bed
* I took each child Christmas shopping. They drew 1 name of a sibling and shopped for that person. It was fun to see them think about and be excited about giving to each other.
* The Dance show
* Our Ward Christmas Polar Express Party
* We were invited over to our neighbors, the Rubens, to watch "The Polar Express" with their amazing surround sound.
* Watching several Christmas messages on mormonchannel.org
* Decorating the house & tree
On Christmas Eve, we spent the day finishing up last minute things. Jon went phone shopping - bless him forever! I made our traditional cardamom bread, which turned out to be the best loaf yet. Then, we picked up Chick-Fil-A nuggets and headed to my mom's for dinner and a white elephant gift exchange. We had a wonderful time being with our wonderful family!
We came home and got into Christmas pajamas (which we now open on Thanksgiving night so that we can wear them all through the holiday season), watched Luke 2 and then opened gifts from Grandma Bowen.
The kids were really good about going to bed even though they were super excited! We found out on Christmas Eve that my grandma had the flu and with my dad doing chemo treatments, my mom and he wanted to get on Tamiflu. Jon worked on Christmas Eve finding a pharmacy that wasn't sold out and then went and got it for my parents.
Christmas Eve excitement!
On Christmas morning, the kids were insistent on setting an alarm. You'd absolutely hate to sleep past 7:00. They got up at 6:45 and came and got us. We had a wonderful, exciting morning. Each child was so appreciative and took their time to admire the things that Santa had left for them.
Santa brought Emily an iPhone, Lindsey a Kitchenaid mixer, Jack an x-box, Kate a guitar, and Hannah & Hailey - a princess dream house. What fun!
After opening our gifts from Santa, we had breakfast. We really only sit down and eat breakfast together like that on Christmas morning, so it's always a treat!
Jack was taste-testing the whipped cream, which some of the kids like to put on pancakes.
After breakfast was cleaned up, we took our time and opened gifts from each other. All the kids loved what their sibling got for them and loved the gifts that we gave them. Emily got gift cards for new clothes, Lindsey got her first cell phone, Jack got x-box games, Kate got Legos, Hannah got a Barbie camper and Hailey got a Frozen tent.
That afternoon, Rich & his family and Mike & his family came over for dinner. We had French Dip sandwiches which was so easy and tasted so good. We enjoyed each other's company, opened gifts from each other and then the kids went sledding on newly fallen snow that day.
Jon went to work for a few hours that afternoon and even though the house was an absolutely disaster, we had a wonderful day spending time with each other and soaking in the Christmas spirit!
We hope all our family & friends had a wonderful Christmas Day as well!
No comments:
Post a Comment