Have a Holly Jolly Christmas!

LOVED Christmas this year! I unfortunately reverted back to old Christmas habits and stayed awake most of Christmas eve night- NOT because I was playing Santa, but because I was so excited for the next day! All month long we have been preparing for Christmas with projects, music, scriptures and stories and I had worked myself up into such a state of excitement that it took me hours to fall asleep! The kids were excited too, but mostly didn't understand what to be excited about but it was hard to resist my enthusiasm :) We took Michaels family traditions and started Christmas on Christmas eve. We had a big dinner with some wonderful friends of ours and finished our "On the way to Christmas" activities. Michael read the Book of Mormon account of what was going on during Christs birth and then we each opened one gift. (Well two for the boys- our friends brought them a present so we let them open it early)
These cars were perfect for our boys! Thanks so much Dave and Linda, you are such wonderful friends to our family! That night we let the boys stay up as long as they wanted (MD finally conked out around 11) and they watched "The Muppet Christmas Carol" while sipping on Hot chocolate and Michael and I played cards and finished watching Jimmy Stewart's "It's a wonderful Life". Finally most of us went to sleep while I layed awake excitedly planning the next days activities!

Christmas morning found us around 7 with the boys crawling into our beds and snuggling with us-it was such a treat! Michael the softy that he is let the boys start out their morning with Luke-warm hot chocolate (Nothing like liquid sugar soaring through a kids veins for them to get into the Christmas mood) After they finished their drinks and were bouncing off the walls we brought out the stockings! The big excitement was NOT the bubbles, or the books but the 25 cent balls we bought them at Walmart!

Modeling the balls:
My mom sent this fun vacuumed sealed bag full of goodies for each kid-Hyrum opened his to find a bunch of candy!
Michael made me model my stocking stuffers-yeah he got a big kick out of putting some Ramen noodles into my stocking
But he made it up by getting me this old box! Inside I found a food processor! yippee!!!
And a new year means a new gun for Michael. Never knew I would marry such a gun lover :)
The wonderful mess that is Christmas!

We let the kids play around for awhile and we heated up leftovers for our lunch. Around 12 we loaded up the car and we headed up to Michael's parents home to finish our Christmas. We had a wonderful Christmas Dinner then we exchanged gifts, visited for awhile and ended with a fun White Elephant gift exchangeFun shot! MD was in heaven having so many Aunts and Uncles to play around with!


I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas. For us it was a wonderful day filled with family, fun and sharing!