Sunday, January 8, 2012

Christmas Eve and Christmas Day

We spent Christmas Eve wrapping presents, frosting sugar cookies, and making Christmas Eve and Christmas Day food--rolls, layered jello, make-ahead french toast and breakfast casserole, etc. Our Christmas Eve is always magical for me: we eat dinner (usually steak, but this year tri-tip, rolls, twice-baked potatoes, green beans, layered jello, Martinellis, chocolate cake, vanilla ice cream) by candelight, we act out the Nativity (do you like that Superman made an appearance this year? H was not convinced that a wiseman or a shepherd trumped Superman, so he would not give up his cape), we watch the church's Nativity video, and this year, we lit the candles on my Weihnachts Pyramids from Germany and talked about how all of the figurines rotated around the Christchild and what each of the people did before and after seeing Jesus. I love the Spirit of Christmas Eve. Then we set out our stockings, tracked Santa on the computer, and sprinkled reindeer food on the front lawn.
 Christmas Morning: We looked at our gifts from Santa, opened our stockings, ate our breakfast yummies, and went to church.  After church, we opened our many presents. After we put out our 6 presents for each of the kids, our presents for each other, the kids' presents they bought each other, presents from the grandparents, and presents from Grandpa and Grandma to each other, we had quite the pile. It's kind of embarrassing. But oh so fun to unwrap.
H got gum in his stocking. It was almost all he needed. He ate 12 pieces on Christmas day.

Mister with his I-Touch from Santa

Sweetie got a bike from Santa

H got a scooter from Santa

Home from church

We were so glad Grandma and Grandpa could come stay with us! We love having them. 

 Some of the favorite gifts:


 Trying out our presents:

 The kids with all of their loot on display.



Mister wasted no time putting his legos together.
 In the evening, we headed to Vickie and Ron's for a delicious dinner and for minute-to-win-it games. The first was how-many-candy-canes-can-you-hook-in-a-minute.

 This one was pretty funny--how many bells can you shake, jump, or dance out of the box in a minute.





4 comments:

Rosalyn said...

This post made me smile. Ninjago was big at our house too, this year (only, my son got most of his for his birthday, not Christmas). This is his first major foray into lego--the Ninjago might be a little old for him (I have no clue how the spinner things are supposed to work, but he wants me to play with him!), but that was what his cousins were getting, so, of course, that's what he wanted . . . Now, of course, I know way more about some tiny Ninjas than I ever wanted!

Rosalyn said...

I was going to add--I don't know if you saw my post about the Ninjago party we had in December, but the cupcakes were surprisingly easy (if you're looking for birthday ideas): http://evestigation.blogspot.com/2011/12/ninjas-and-ninjago.html

bluestocking mama said...

thanks, Rosalyn! I saw your post and committed it to memory for April . . .

mwells said...

I want to come play games with you next year!