Christmas Week

Whew! Do you think it's been long enough, that I should go ahead and post about Christmas?! If I wait much longer, it will be the next Christmas I am writing about!!

 So, here are a few pictures of Christmas, and the best part, the rest of Christmas Week.

 So, the night before, as everyone else has already said, we did the Nativity and exchanged presents with my family and ate appetizers- yummm! It worked out so great, because then we weren't also trying to squeeze in my family on Christmas Day, which is just too much, with Danny's family, too!

Tristan was so cute and took his role very seriously. Now him and Alaina always pretend to be married- I wonder if this is what started it??

Hunter was an angel, Josh was a shepherd and Alex was King Herod. He looved wearing the crown and beard!

Christmas morning!! We locked the two doors together and tried not to let the kids get up before 6:30. We did stockings first, which had oranges, a little candy, a Santa mug, bubble bath and baby cereals. I forgot Candy canes and Alex was a little disappointed about that. (How could I forget candy canes??) But they enjoyed all their loot and Danny and I gave each other wayyy too much candy. We agreed next year to keep it to a nice days worth of chocolate and not a month's worth!!

Then onto presents!! Let's summarize by saying everyone got plenty, with the highlights being a pillow pet for each of them, a kitty, Barbie movie, and Zooble for Alaina, a remote control helicopter, sky ball and Guess Who game for Tristan, a dancing skeleton, Shrek movie, dancing/ singing snowman for Alex, a Dora doll, bath animals and light up spinner for Emme, school t-shirts for each of them and water bottles, and then more from Justin. Yikes! They were spoiled!! But it was fun!

Danny really like his two t-shirts. This one says, "Does this shirt make me look Scottish?"

And this one says, "It's called a "kilt" because that's what happened to the last guy who called it a skirt!"

Hahaha!

Notice the kids all wearing their head lamps that they got from Grandma Doc the night before? Man, they love those things!!

After presents we ate a delicious dutch oven omelette thingy, yummmm.... and played games.

Then we got ready for sacrament meeting at 1pm, which was wonderful and I thought great to have on Christmas Day, and then we went to the Campbells. There they all got spoiled again, and we ate a wonderful dinner.

By the end of the night they were all cranky and irritable, but that is pretty much to be expected!! Danny and I thought it was one of the most relaxing, peaceful Christmases we have had. The kids are getting funner all the time and we loved having the day with them.

But what made it really nice, was that Danny had the rest of the week off from work!! That made it all feel so relaxed and luxurious! So that night after the kids were in bed, I took a long, hot bath with some of my Lindor truffles next to me and read all of my Christmas book, Austenland. I thought it was a great fun read! It was the perfect end to a great day!

The rest of the week was awesome, too, but I forgot to take any pictures! We took the older kids to the movies, went to the mall, played lots of games, took a few naps, and generally enjoyed ourselves. The only downer was that we got a bug of some sort and so each of us was sick at least one day. :( So that meant we didn't do all the things we would have liked. But Danny is already scheduling to get Christmas week off this coming year, too. It was sooo fun and felt like a real holiday!!

 And I think this pretty much sums up how we felt by the end of the holidays!!