Santa Came!

This year, our Christmas was a little different than years past. We've been pretty fortunate to have Ron home every Christmas morning with his work schedule. This year, he was off in the morning, but had to go to work in the afternoon, so we did most of our celebrations on Christmas Eve. A couple nights before Christmas, the kids made some sugar cookies for Santa. We baked them on the 23rd, and then decorated them Christmas Eve morning.

The result.

I forgot my camera for most of the festivities, so I don't have a ton of photos. My brother and his family were going to head out to Ridgecrest after they opened presents Christmas morning, so we had a Christmas Eve lunch with them and opened our presents to each other and our kids opened presents from my parents. Of course they got all kids of cool stuff there and we had lots of good food! After all the presents, we headed out to Ron's grandparents house where we celebrated with his family and opened lots more presents and ate even more yummy food! After some time, it was time to go home and wait for Santa to arrive. A tradition in both our families is to open PJ's on Christmas Eve, so we carry on the tradition in our family. This year, however, Michael had gotten some awesome Superman pajama's (cape included) from Grandma & Grandpa Smeesh that he had changed into while we were over there. The PJ's we got the kids were Christmas pajama's that I wanted the kids to wear for Christmas morning. Let's just say that Michael was less than thrilled to have to change out of his Superman jammies and into the snowmen playing football jammies! But after we distracted him with getting the table set up with Santa's cookies and milk, he seemed fine.

He cried a little! :o(

The table set up near the fireplace so that Santa wouldn't miss his cookies & milk. We also left a bowl of water for the reindeer! (I need to remember to get carrots next year!)

After Santa came...

Opening their stockings.

Santa brought Emma a princess bike this year! She loves it, but gets frustrated on trying to ride it. She starts out fine and then she thinks about it and says that she can't do it and gives up. We'll keep working on it!

Here are the kids all dressed up for Christmas Sunday.

We had a wonderful Christmas and the kids we spoiled (as usual!). We are truly lucky to have so many family members who love us so much! One of the highlights for me this year was listening to Michael sing the songs he's been learning in primary and singing it all the time! And, eventually, Emma picked up on the lyrics and joined in. He had learned the Children's Songbook hymn "Picture a Christmas". I especially loved hearing him sing it while we were out shopping! It meant that even though we talk about Santa coming and all the fun that goes with that, he is still learning the true meaning of why we celebrate this season. I sometimes feel like I don't talk about it enough, but I'm glad he is listening when I do, or he picks it up during Primary and it makes me feel so good! We hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and here's to a very happy new year!