Merry Christmas

I hope you all had a great Christmas. The kids were so excited about Christmas this year.  Analyn got that something was going on so she enjoyed the counting down to Christmas Eve and all the fun Christmas stuff going on around town.  Christmas eve was a pretty mellow day for us.  Most of the day I was baking so the kids watched some Christmas movies and took naps (I was really glad that Clay and Analyn took their naps still, even though they were excited).  After all that stuff was done the kids cleaned their rooms before we headed to Grandma and Grandpa's house.  They even helped me put present under the tree (the presents stay in my room until then since I don't want to tempt Clay).  The kids couldn't focus on anything but the presents they got to open.  Christmas pajamas and slipper.  Once dinner, dessert, and presents were done the kids immediately (and I'm not exaggerating) changed into their pajamas and wanted to go home.  A tradition we started with the kids was once they were in their pajamas we drive around and look at lights on the way home.  Analyn loved the lights, but Clay and Lizzie were impatient to get home.  But we got home finally and the kids put out some cookies and hot chocolate stuff out for Santa.  (click on the pictures if you want to see them enlarged)

 Imagine our shock when I woke up before the kids at 6am.  That could have been my gift right there since we were expecting to get woken up at 4 or 5am.  I had to wake the kids up too.  It was great though because we were afraid they would just go and start opening presents.   They were all overjoyed to see Santa had come and got what they wanted.  Even Analyn got a necklace she had wanted.  Luckily our Elf passed the request on for her to Santa.  This year we tried to make the kids take turns so that we could actually see what they got.  Last year we missed a lot of presents because they were going too fast.  Analyn was excited but still wanted us to help her with presents.  After cleaning up from present opening the kids played.  Analyn took the stand from Lizzie's doll and acted like it was a microphone.  It was very humorous!

 The rest of our Christmas was okay.  Christmas break for Clay has been more trying than anything with a lot of meltdown and fits.  He is very schedule oriented so this is really hard for him.  So Christmas had 3 or 4 meltdowns.  I was honestly glade when the day was over.  And I was proud of how many times my kids referenced Jesus' birth during the day.  Glad to know they are remembering the real reason we celebrate.  My parents bought the girls some church dresses.  And I bought Clay a church outfit.  They all looked dashing on the following Sunday.  Clay was adamantly against the tie though so we decided it wasn't a battle worth fighting.  Once church was over though he wanted to wear his tie with his normal t-shirt.  Oh kids.  We were very blessed this year and the kids enjoyed the day so in all it was a success!