Merry Christmas!

Christmas this year was interesting. Elizabeth was of course really excited. But Clay got it this year and understood so much more so he was just, if not more excited. They were always anxious every morning to add a tree to the advent calendar and remove a link to their count down chains. Even Analyn was excited for those thing, even though she had no clue what was going on. We were lucky and James got off at 2pm on Christmas eve. We spend the afternoon and evening at my parents for dinner and lots of lounging. The kids got to open presents from Grandma and Grandpa and their Christmas pajamas before we headed home for the night. Clay had been waiting for this for a while!!

Since this is the first year we weren't with my parents for Christmas since moving to Nevada we decided that we would get the kids in their pjs and then would drive around and look at lights. This was by far Analyn's favorite activity. In fact she still gets excited and yells, "LIGHTS" anytime we go outside and some are still lit up. Once we were home the kids put out some cookies and hot chocolate for Santa (we have an electric kettle so it's easy for Santa to get hot chocolate fast). I was excited for Christmas eve so that I could finally put presents under the tree. All our presents were sitting in the closet wrapped since the beginning of November. It is SO nice to have my closet back!

Christmas morning came and much to James and I's relief the kids woke up at about 5:45am. That is only about 15 minutes earlier than normal so we couldn't complain too much. Even Analyn was awake bright and early. Clay and Elizabeth were really excited to check out what Santa had brought them. Since Analyn didn't know what was going on she really didn't care. She found some chocolate in her stocking though and she thought that sounded like a great breakfast!

This Hello Kitty purse was by far Analyn's favorite gift. She loved it, and all us girl (myself included) got quite a few Hello Kitty things.

Once presents were done we had breakfast and got ready for church. In high school I was in the Choraliers (selective choir group) and I had the prettiest dress we had to wear for performances. Well Mom took my dress and used the skirt material to make Christmas dresses for the girls. They turned out adorable too! After church we had to deal with a lot of whining, crying, and being grumpy. In fact the kids all took naps by 11am. All in all though we had a great day celebrating our savior's birth!