A Rundown of Christmas

Well, here it is. Our long awaited, and much anticipated rundown of our Christmas festivities. Just be prepared, it was all pretty normal and uneventful, I hope you aren't too disappointed.

For us Christmas started on Monday, Eric had the whole week off (he celebrated by taking a much needed nap). It was nice to have him home to help wrangle our children, they all had the week off, and were all a bit crazy with Christmas coming. We spent the better part of our week doing nothing significant whatsoever. We did some food shopping, ate BK for lunch once, played outside, built wonderful Lego things, read, baked cookies, ate cookies, baked more cookies, ate more cookies, worked on projects (oh, wait, no we didn't, we totally neglected any and all real work).

Christmas Eve was fun, a bit long-but isn't it always too long when you have kids? After lunch we let the kids open our family gift-a new game to keep them occupied until the festivities later on. We went over to Eric's parent's house for dinner and the evening's entertainment. A new tradition was started this year-the family talent show. It went about as well as you would expect a show to go with 30 minutes of prep. And Eric's mom did the Christmas story in a fun way for the kids. She's got all of the Little People nativity sets, she took all of the pieces and divied them up into bags for all of the kids. As she told the story, the kids each took turns bringing the correct pieces up to the table with the buildings. The kids were captivated, and it worked beautifully. Afterwards we went home, opened Christmas pjs, pulled a carrot from the garden, and left it, along with the cookies, out for Santa.

Christmas Day went smoothly and was well enjoyed. We toned it down this year, and it was a great success. We had fewer tantrums from overloaded kids, and most importantly, they didn't even notice. They loved their gifts, and were able to really enjoy them. Santa left the boys a super cool Hot Wheels trick track set (along with some new cars in their stockings), Eme got a new fairy snap doll, and Maddie got Abby Caddaby. They all got new books, the boys got legos, Eme got an apron set, Maddie got bath toys. And for our grand finale-R/C's for the boys and even Eme!