Christmas morning!
Christmas with kids is the best! (Christmas morning makes up for the years of dirty diapers, the sleepless nights, the bickering, the excruciating first grade homework assignments, the stress, the worry, and all the stuff that keeps Parenting magazine in business. Had I known how important Christmas morning was to parents, I would have put on a better show for my mom and dad when I was a kid. But that's the point. That your kids have no idea how much joy their joy brings to you. It's pure, unconditional, spontaneous joy.)
After the big reveal, we ate the sugary cereal Santa brought, gorged ourselves on cinnamon rolls, enjoyed the contents of our stockings, battled the AT-AT, cared for the new baby Katie in our family, and watched this.
Finally, we dressed for church. (And took these pictures.) With it being Christmas Day and all, we thought it might be nice to get a family picture. You can see how well that turned out--
Oh well. You get what you get and you don't throw a fit. Especially on Christmas.
All of the children at church performed "Christmas Bells" and "Star Were Gleaming." Mary was right up front, peachy proud and super serious as she sang. (She sang!!) David was somewhat distracted by his tongue during the first song (it was like he'd just discovered it for the first time), but he did sing the second song. (He sang!!) The service was a beautiful and brief one hour, and the whole congregation got to sing lots of Christmas carols, which I love. Our kids survived the excruciating wait to open the rest of their presents, and they weren't any more poorly behaved than any other Sunday.
(Incidentally, in the car on the way home from church, David, in that innocent and matter-of-fact way of his, announced, "It's hard for me to believe in things I can't see. Like Santa Claus and Baby Jesus. I think they're both not real." Just what you want to hear on Christmas--that your kid doesn't believe in Jesus. I am perfectly happy to be perfectly honest with my kids about Santa Claus--but at that particular moment Mary was listening intently. And Mary wants to believe. She needs to--it's one of the ways she's been organizing and controlling the universe this year. I am also perfectly happy to let my kids believe in Santa if they want to. So I wasn't about to put a crack in Mary's Christmas. In response to David's announcement that Santa Claus and Baby Jesus are both not real, I said, "David, one is real and one is just for fun." I thought this was obvious, but he asked, "Which one?" Seriously?! "Which one? I don't know which one is just for fun!" Let's see, one motivates your parents to drag to three hours of church every Sunday and one just brought you a giant AT-AT walker. Which one do you think is just for fun?!? I told him his heart would tell him which one was real, and then I did what any parent would do--I blew him off and said we'd talk about it later.)
After church we opened the gifts under the tree. Hooray!
First, David and Daddy got to work passing out the presents.
Then the fun began!
The last present under the tree was a big, huge box for our whole family from my grandma and Aunt Janell. It was something I was in cahoots with my aunt on. The kids were super excited to open it.
Inside was a Sunday movie night box! A box filled with fun DVDs and all kinds of yummy treats. Our kids are old enough that we can really enjoy sitting down to watch a whole movie as a family. (This will be perfect, since we're going to start attending church at an earlier time this year. So having something to fill the long Sunday afternoon and evening will be great!)
Thank you, Aunt Janell!
The rest of the afternoon was filled with those typical Christmas afternoon activities--like assembling toys and sporting new scarves.
Also, David played with the At-At Walker like he's never played before. (It is seriously a super cool toy.)
We had our traditional Christmas dinner--finger foods in front of Rudolph. The kids LOVE this. You would think we took them to Disneyland or something.
Just before bedtime, we finished the advent calendar. The contents revealed a puzzle scavenger hunt for one final present (this one from Grandpa Mike and Grandma Evie). The search was on!
Success! Two toy airplanes and tickets for a flight to Texas on a REAL airplane!
See you soon, Grandma Evie!
And Happy Holidays to the rest of ya'll!
P.S. And happy birthday to Greg--TODAY! May we celebrate with 24-hours of vomit-free bliss.
