Christmas 2011

This year was the first time we haven't been home for Christmas. There's some great things about both but I really missed not seeing family. But we still had a great time! Christmas Eve we had lasagna and then opened up our traditional Christmas Eve gift:Chris read the Twas the Night Before Christmas and I read the Nativity story from the Bible while Chris and the kids acted it out with the nativity I'd made with my mom.
Then we wrote letters to Santa and sent them off to bed. Miles was insistent on sitting on the couch while his brothers wrote theirs at the table.
After Santa came and before the boys woke up:
I was worse than the kids that night. I couldn't sleep very well and then woke up at five and struggled to get back to sleep. Finally at six I got up to go feed our neighbors cats. While I was gone the kids woke up and around 6:15 we headed out to the living room.
Everyone loved what Santa brought. Jared got a DS that he's been asking for for two years. Spencer a leapster, and Miles a train set. Oh and I got a HD camcorder and Chris got a framed world map which we took back. At least I scored with his birthday...
In their stockings they each got their own jar of pickles. Love it! That's how I know they're my boys:)With Christmas being on Sunday this year we got to go to Church too. The question was do we open everything up before going? We decided to drag it out and see if we could only open up a few. Somehow we did just that. We Played with Santa gifts, ate breakfast, required them to be dressed and ready for church, and opened a few gifts each and then played with those. I really liked it because we were able to focus on just a few gifts without being overwhelmed with all the gifts. This Sunday Christmas may have given us a new tradition for our family of prolonging Christmas by opening gifts up slowly. We'll see if our kids let us...
Church was all singing and nice. The boys loved that it was only an hour and not the usual 3. After getting home Jared immediately got his pajamas back on along with everyone else besides Spencer.
Jared said his head and eyes were hurting him so I whipped out his glasses (this was the first time he'd worn them in a long time and hasn't worn them since.)
Miles was wiped out. We were dancing to a new wii game and playing a new wii game, Skylander, and he slept through it all.
It was a wonderful Christmas and for the next few days we continued to stay in pajamas and play with our new things.
Now that month has past the most popular items are Super hero capes (thanks grandma M!), Just Dance Kids wii game, Light sabers, and Miles LOVES his little lego ninjago. Miles carries his ninja everywhere:) It's currently lost and keeps asking, "where guy at?" and when you ask him where he put it he blames everyone by saying, "daddy put it" or whoever he feels like saying. He tries to play with his brothers ninjas but every once in awhile they say no:( so he gets really sad. We need to find his soon!

This January we've continued singing Christmas songs and thinking of ways to give and serve. I love this time of year and already look forward to next Christmas. Merry Christmas!