Christmas

We had to prepare for Christmas by putting out a plate of cookies for Santa. We got home pretty late from Aunt Sharon's house and so all the kids ran to get in their beds. But...you can't forget the cookies, so Kenzie ran down the stairs from her bedroom to remind us of that. She grabbed our special cookie plate and Jared went and put some cookie dough on a cookie pan. (We have cookie dough in our freezer so that we can cook up fresh cookies when ever we want.) Kenzie poured the milk and set the plate up just as she wanted it to be. Jared assured her that he would put the cookies on the plate as soon as they came out of the oven. She hurried off to bed so that Santa would be able to come.

Jared and I busied ourselves with "stuff" and completely forgot about the cookies. Jared realized a couple minutes too late. They were burnt. I told him Santa would still eat them...he strongly disagreed! So, he threw away that whole pan of perfectly black cookies and started over. This time, we put the timer on it and managed to cook a perfectly light tan cookie. I'm pretty sure Santa enjoyed those cookies, cause Jared tested a few of them.

Every year I hang up the stockings that Sharon and I made for my family and I finished Jordyn's this year. It is okay but I am also a bit annoyed when I look at the ballerina because she doesn't seem to fit with the look of the other stockings. I might make a new one but we will see.

The milk maid is my stocking that my mom made for me when I was a little kid and the whole inspiration for the creation of Jared and kid's stockings. I am so happy to have my stocking hung up next to everyone else's!

The girls in their new pajamas. Jordyn was in great need of pajamas. I didn't have any for her. Not one pair. She usually wore a onesie to bed but with the kind of winters we have, she needed a few nice warm pairs of pajamas to get through it.

We were awaken at 5:30 in the morning not to excited children but to a phone ringing. My sister, Sharon, was due to have her baby on January 5th, 2012 but she had contractions all night long and they were 10 minutes apart. She was going to drive to the Rexburg hospital (45 minutes away) to have her baby so she didn't want to miss it and have the baby in the car. She had invited me to come watch the birth, but in the end, I chose to stay home with my family and celebrate Christmas. So, we went back to bed and got up when the kids woke up at 8:00.

I didn't get any pictures of us opening presents but we had a great time. The kids all got pillow pets from Santa...Santa coordinates with parents but not with grand parents and so now our kids have two sets of pillow pets to snuggle up with at night. They love them! We had a nice breakfast and then left for Church at 11:00. Sacrament meeting was so nice. The primary children sang Christmas Bells are Ringing and Away in a Manger. It was so sweet to listen to their sweet little voices. They definitely brought in the Spirit. Afterwards, a family in our ward played the part of a family having Family Home Evening. They read the story of the Savior being born and interspersed between their scriptures, the choir sang Christmas hymns. There is a friend of mine in our ward who sings like an angel in the opera. She had a solo that was so amazing to hear. Her singing brought tears to my eyes and I am not really a cryer when it comes to music. Definitely one of the best Christmas programs I have ever been to!

I made some little skirts for the girls and Jared got me this nice wool dress coat. It is so warm and I feel very pretty in it. He chose very well.

(Yes, that is my slip showing...very embarrassing! I hope that it wasn't showing all day at church.)

Eli had to jump in on our modeling. He wanted to show off his new church clothes too and his guns.

The big present this year that Santa brought for our family was an X-Box 360 Kinect. The game came with a Kinect Adventures game and Santa coordinated with Aunt Heidi, Jared's sister who had us this year for Christmas, and she got us Kinect Sports. It is awesome! Thank you so much Heidi!

My favorite one is the boxing. Speaking of boxing (like my segway into this next sentence) Jared was playing with Eli and apparently it gets you so hot that Eli felt like he really needed to remove his shirt. Anyways,  Jared thought that he would take it easy on the little one and so he didn't punch much. Eli knocked him out, so he thought, "okay, I am going to try a little harder." He did but still got beat by Eli. So the third round Jared decided that he was going to go all out, no mercy! Eli still knocked him out and now Jared will never live that down. So funny!

The kid's favorite game is the bowling. We actually planned on bring the kids bowling sometime during the break but once we started playing this, we thought, never mind!

We even let each one of the kids create their own avatar on the X-Box. Eli chose to wear sun glasses, Lex chose butterfly face paint, and Kenzie chose tiger face paint. I love seeing their personalities come through on their avatars.

Jordyn enjoys her little leap frog she got to match up with Eli's. She plays with it all the time.

My parents and Byron and Jemayla came over for dinner which consisted of lasagna and manicotti. It was a yummy dinner and great company.

Byron and Jemayla wore these funny hats over that they got for Christmas from Heidi, I think. They are awesome hats!

Funny enough, Sharon never ended up having her baby. I think she decided that she didn't want to be in labor and that she was not going to have a Christmas baby and so the labor stopped. Can you do that? I guess you can!