MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!

I'm a little bit behind, and now I feel obligated to do a really good post since a friend of mine put a link to my blog in her famous blog. Seriously, her blog is so awesome, click HERE to go check it out. (Two can play this game, Brandi..hehehehe!)

Anywhoooo...I was going through all the pictures from Christmas Eve and Christmas Day and what do you know...there are all the pictures from the Christmas Programs at the schools. So, for the sake of Grandparents who desperately miss their grandchildren, you will have to bare with me while we take a step back to remember the school fun we experienced last week.

Jordan's Pre-K program was awesome. Jordan wasn't so into the actions, but at least he's trying to sing along...when he's not distracted. It took him a while to realize I was there, but once he did he actually started trying to go along.



Karlee's Kindergarten program was really cute too. They didn't have any music, so they were singing A Capella. Her teacher told me afterwards that only about 3 of the kids had all the words and actions down, and Karlee was one of them. She said she put Karlee on one side and the other two on the other side for their practice, and hoped that they would carry the sides that they were on. She said it worked, but Karlee had one side going and the others had the other side going but they weren't together, so for the performance she put the three together in the middle, and it worked a lot better. It's really cute/funny, the third song was particularly fun especially when Karlee got something wrong and her little expressions, you'll just have to watch and see.


Elizabeth's school program was about 2 weeks ago, and I already blogged about that, so if you missed that click HERE. Otherwise we will be moving on.

For Christmas Eve, we had a nice relaxing morning. Even though the party was at our house, it was a lot less work than Thanksgiving. I think we learned how much food we did NOT need. We still had a ton of food though.

We had the Douglass and the Roche Families over for food, fun, and friendship. (Sorry, I know cheesy, I couldn't think of anything else to go along with the other F's.) Anyways, the kids all went outside and played on our trampoline. (That's ripping AGAIN, thanks to Karlee's constant acrobatic talents with the net.) It was in the 70's and really nice outside.

We ate a yummy dinner of Ham, cheesy potatoes, green beans, rolls, and some super yummy jello salad. Then of course we had appetizers and dessert. Sadly enough, without my friend Tina's constant reminders to take pictures, all I managed to get pictures of were the kids all dressed up for the nativity play.

The kids looked awesome. We just threw together some costumes from some scrap material and dress up stuff from the girls room. I've decided that if I want to continue this tradition then I need to have costumes already made, and a "script" already written out. That way we can address the wise men that are not mentioned in Luke 2, and maybe fit in the innkeeper. My family always had an inn keeper that turns Mary and Joseph away, I always thought it was a good reminder of why they had to go to the stable. But for a first time attempt at the play, it went pretty good.

Here's our Mary and Joseph

Here's our shepherd and angels taking a break before their big entrance.


Here is our wisewoman, who desperately wanted to wear a crown, but wasn't so thrilled about me taking her picture.


Here are our wise men visiting the baby Jesus, and bringing gifts.

Here is our award winning cast, or some of them anyways!

After our play, we watched the short nativity movie that the church made, and had a nice reminder of what Christmas is really about. Then we had dessert and played Christmas Bingo. A lot of the little kids were getting pretty tired, so we called it a night and everyone went home.

After everyone went home, we opened up our Christmas Eve Presents. Our new tradition that we adopted this year is Christmas PJ's. Our reasoning behind it was not to copy everyone else that does it, but to simplify things a little. Last year we let each of the kids open one present. The problem was that we didn't know what was in each of the presents. One of the kids picked a present that wasn't a toy and the other two picked toys. You can probably already guess what happened next. So to simplify, we are just going to do the PJ thing.

Then the kids started bombarding us to ask if they could sleep out by the Christmas tree that night. They wanted to see Santa, and someone had told them that it was very magical to sleep with the tree lights on. I figured, "What could it hurt? It might even start a new fun tradition, right?."

WRONG...and here's why.

First of all, my kids did not get to sleep until after 10pm. 2nd of all, If the kids are all in their beds and they wake up super early in the morning, they might just go back to sleep, but if there is this bright tree and beautifully wrapped presents stating that Santa had been there, then there is no going back to sleep.
So at 5:00 this morning, I hear kids talking excitedly. Things like "Look! Santa's been here." "Let's see what's in our stockings." "Santa ate the cookies and took the water bottle we left him!" And the one that got me out of bed was Karlee saying, "Look! I got my guitar!!!" Oh brother! My kids played the whole, "My present is ripped, let's look inside and see what it is," card this year. I had to tape up about 5 presents before Christmas finally came. This morning was no exception, when Karlee "accidentally" stepped on her present, that only minutes before had been propped up against the wall, and put a big whole in it, so you could see the guitar hiding inside. Kids, Kids, Kids! What will they think of next???

I told the kids if they could convince their daddy to get out of bed, then they could open their presents. Try as they did they could not get Erik out of bed. they had to wait until 7:30am. Which is torture for little kids. I put on a movie, and went back to bed. Around 7:15, I could hear the sounds of mischievous, talented little minds at work trying to figure out what was inside their presents, and I decided it was time to start. Luckily, this time Erik decided to get up.

It was chaos trying to get pictures, and open presents one at a time. Jordan just has NO patience. It was like torture for him to wait. He couldn't. After every present that he opened, he insisted that we open it. Looking back now, I should have said, "As soon as all the presents have been opened, we will open the packaging!
But that probably would not have gone over well, since as I said before Jordan has NO patience. I hardly got any pictures at all, or video of everyone opening presents. Oh well, live and learn!

All in all, I think everyone got everything that they wanted and more, and they were very happy. I was very happy to finally get the sewing machine that I have been wanting for 10 years. I already completed 3 projects today, and have many more still left to do. All in due time. Tomorrow we tackle the clean up before the storm...I mean the flooring goes in. So enjoy some of the few pictures that I did get, and I can't wait to see all of our friends pictures too.

One pleasant surprise, which almost turned out to be another Christmas Fiasco, was Elizabeth's American Idol Double Dance mat. It took some practice, a few melt downs and pep talks, but we finally got the hang of it, and it turned out to be pretty fun. It's a great way to play with kids and prove how out of shape you are. My legs are so sore!

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!