Christmas Day

It was really an unusual Christmas for us for several reasons.  Christmas fell on a Sunday this year, and we weren't sure what we were going to do about going to church on Christmas Day.  With our situation, we decided not to go that morning. We continued our tradition of reading the Christmas story out of the bible with everyone snuggled in our bed first thing in the morning before anyone goes downstairs.  But the other reason it was unusual was that this was the first year that the kids didn't believe in Santa Clause.  So, I had always told them if you don't believe, he doesn't come.  And he didn't.  :(

It was different, but it was okay. We read the Christmas story, then came down.

 We did still do stockings, so the kids opened those first.

 Jake and the cats get stockings too. Here Jake waits patiently for his bag of treats.

 After breakfast, we opened out gifts.  Jennifer got a lot of nice things, as usual.

 One of my favorite parts of the morning are the many hugs that are shared with each other thanking them for their thoughtful gifts. Here Justin is hugging Jennifer.

 Jake got a new deer antler!! Definitely one of his favorite things!!

 Justin got a new Nintendo 3DS.

 Nana came over on Christmas morning

 And more NERF guns!!

 There was one gift left - an XBOX Kinect!! They were both SOO excited!!!!

 We told the kids that we could keep the XBOX and make a teen room out of the playroom OR we could return the XBOX and try to take a trip. They both agreed to change the play room to a teen hangout area, so we got to work on that.  We had given them a small screen but it was too small, so we ended up getting a large screen for that room.  There will be another post on that.

Then we headed to Dad and Sarah's house to celebrate over there.  Sarah had a yummy lunch and then we opened gifts from them. Sarah had made the kids a blanket each as well as their other gift.

I had hoped to get to go back over to Mom and Bill's house to celebrate with Bill's family, but just didn't feel like it. I had a cold this Christmas and was just really tired by that evening, so I ended up just hanging out and playing with our new gift - the Kindle Fire.  I think I am really going to like it.