It's Christmas!!

Hooray! Christmas was here!  I don't know about anyone else out there but December flew by at our house.  My kids even commented how Christmas came so fast this year.  Amazing.  I remember thinking when I was a kid that December was the longest month of my life.  But as always, Christmas arrives and spending it with family is the very best part. 

Christmas Eve
We always find ourselves at Grandma and Grandpa Taggart's house on Christmas Eve. We have a traditional Christmas Eve dinner, either read or act out the Nativity, open presents (always pajamas) and then hurry home to bed to wait for Santa.

This year we acted out the Nativity.  With Matt and his family here from Colorado we had a full cast.

 I have never seen sheep so interested in babies.  
They are just mesmerized by Baby Jesus.

And the shepherds were extremely worshipful. 
They never stopped bowing until we told them they should stop.

Here's the whole cast post performance.  We'll go clockwise from the top:

Joshua and Ethan - Shepherds

Emma - Angel

Isaac - Sheep

Hannah and James - Mary and Joseph

Nathan - Sheep

Eden - Baby Jesus

They were so cute.  We laughed (quietly and behind hands) through their whole performance.  It's so much more fun to have kids play out the nativity than adults.  Although we did have one adult in this production, Bryan (Katie's husband) was the donkey.  It's really a rite of passage in our family.  The newest member of the family must take their place as donkey in the nativity. 

Back home, the kids are ready for bed in their new pjs and slippers.

The excitement is killing them. 

Christmas Day

There's a rule around our house, no one can go down stairs to see what Santa brought until everyone is awake and ready.  The kids know this rule and since Ethan is always awake first and is a very good rule follower when he woke up at 6:00AM on the dot, so did everyone else.  JayDee and I were lying in bed when we hear Ethan creep down the ladder of his bunkbed, then there is some rustling as he wakes Isaac up and helps him into his slippers, next he's over in the the girl's room trying to quietly wake Emma up.  The funny thing was Emma was not waking up.  When I looked in to see his tactics he had the covers pulled down and he is leaning way in close to her face and whispering very urgently to wake up.  It was funny.  By now everyone else was up so I wondered to myself why he just didn't yell?  Soon enough they were all awake and we were heading down to see what magic was in store.

This is what we found.

Pillow pets for everyone!

Isaac snuck down the stairs just a minute before everyone else and I thought it was funny that he was sort of apprehensive about that stuffed animal even though he had begged for one along with all the other kids.  
Maybe he was just awestruck.

 Hannah couldn't be happier. . .for now.

 Although Isaac isn't sporting an enormous smile at this moment he is holding exactly what he asked for for Christmas, "lights that you put on trees."  Any time anyone (including 2 Santas) asked him what he wanted for Christmas this was his answer.  We always had to explain that it was chocolate covered sunflower seeds in a container that looked liked Christmas lights.

Here Emma is showing me that she received elf fingernail polish in her 
stocking. Yep, right on the bottle it said ELF polish.  I told her I had no idea that elves made fingernail polish.  She was quite amazed by the whole thing. After rummaging through their stockings they went immediately back to those pillow pets.  Isaac was riding his monkey like a horse and started singing the pillow pet theme song and just like they had planned it, 
all the kids joined in.

As much as I would have loved to stop our morning right here, there were more presents to be had. At our house we keep Christmas rather simple.  In the spirit of the true meaning of Christmas we have taught our children that Jesus received 3 gifts from the wisemen so that's how many they will get.  They get gold - something they want (this is what Santa brings) frankincense - something they need, and muir - a meaningful gift.  As kids, the meaning of each gift is usually lost on them and because they are small usually muir is just something else they want but this system will grow with them and hopefully become very meaningful as they get older.  JayDee and I love it because then our kids can focus more on giving than receiving and we don't fall prey to the gluttony that Christmas can so easily become.  This year each of our kids did get one pretty significant gift.  For some it was their muir for others it was their frankincense but for all it was awesome!

 Ethan got a bow and arrow.  

He can shoot from farther away than this but I had to get the bales of hay in.

 

He's working on becoming the next Robin Hood.

 Emma got a gift certificate to get her ears pierced.

Here's her before picture.

And her after.

Hannah and Isaac unwrapped these clues to find their gifts.

They're not too hard but remember these guys are 5 and 3.

This is what they found.

Gotta take these babies for a spin.

I guess that's one good thing about having no snow for Christmas.

All around it was a great Christmas.  After things settled down at our house we went over to Grandma's for more presents, she's always good for fulfilling another want, but that's what grandparents are for. We've had all kinds of fun and the kids have loved spending time with their cousins that they don't get to see very often.  Now that it's over I'm kind of sad.  Christmas is so anticipated and yet over so quickly.  Good thing it comes around every year.