Category: Our Family

I would like to report that the kids all slept peacefully through the night, but that didn’t happen! Chloe was awake for a good couple of hours just being cranky. She would fall asleep and then we would move her back to her bed and then she’d just come walking back into our room and climbing back into our bed a few minutes later. During that time I saw Ethan come out into the hall and look like he was going to walk towards the living room. I told him not to go out there and he instantly turned and went to the bathroom. I took Chloe back to her bed and sat with her a bit to wait for her to fall asleep, at which point Tyra woke up wanting to know if it was morning. So the two oldest were the ones awake in the middle of the night hoping it was time to get Christmas started and Chloe was just not sleeping well. The only ones that actually slept were Jeremy and Dinah!

By 7 all the kids were awake (Ethan and Tyra were awake first though and I had to put up the child gate to keep them down the hall so they couldn’t go out before the little ones were awake) and so we turned them loose on the living room. They went for their stockings first. The boys got some small lego sets and a couple of cars characters, and the girls got Care Bear toys. Ethan got right to work assembling his legos:

And the girls were excited to play with their new care bears:

Kyle got the Moon Spinners on dvd and a new ps2 controller extension. I got the Pajama Game on dvd. While the kids were playing with the stuff in their stockings (and eating the candy they got) I preheated the oven and got breakfast started. Frozen turnovers are so EASY and we love doing that for breakfast Christmas morning.

Santa kept the candy simple this year too. Candy canes on the tree, and plastic candy canes filled with long laffy taffy’s in the kids stockings. Of course the kids were pigs about it. 😛

After eating breakfast, (which Dinah and Jeremy didn’t want to eat, surprising?) we went back to the living room to open presents. We kept things VERY simple this year. Every year we get each of the kids something they want, something they need, something to wear, and something to read. In the past we have gone crazy with this and they have gotten one or two things they want from us and another one from Santa. They have gotten pjs on Christmas eve AND something else nice to wear to open Christmas morning, and a couple of books each. This year we toned it down BIG TIME. The girls all got a set of Care Bear toys as their want, Ethan got battleship and Jeremy got hungry, hungry, hippos. Ethan and Dinah were they only ones that got a need this year (because I couldn’t pin down a need for the others) and Ethan got his cub scout uniform, and Dinah got a set of scriptures and a crayon bank to keep her weekly earnings in. For the something to wear they all got jammies, which they opened last night, and each of them got ONE book this year. See we toned it down quite a bit this year and I actually had it all bought and wrapped weeks in advance!

I love how happy Chloe was to unwrap and get to look at her book. When Ethan upwrapped his book, his face was much like the one when he found pjs in the package last night.

I gave Kyle a pair of slippers from the kids (which they had told him about weeks ago when I bought them), a corn dog maker, and “The Jungle Book” by Rudyard Kipling. Kyle got me a second bowl for the kitchenaid, (but it doesn’t fit so we’ll have to exchange it) and a beater with rubber around it so that it scrapes the sides and bottom of the bowl as it mixes. Santa brought the kids a little people nativity set, a whole bunch of movies for the family and “The Secret Garden” for me (so everyone got a new book this year!).

The afternoon, the kids spent playing with their new things. Ethan and Tyra played a game of battleship. We had yummy sandwiches with our favorite deli meat for lunch. And we watched a few of our new movies. In the evening Debby and Jeff came out for a visit (which worked out because I wasn’t sure when we would be able to get their presents to them) and were here for dinner which ended up being a pot of homemade chicken soup.

Chloe had a REALLY late nap which meant that she was too awake at bed time to go back to sleep, so Kyle and I stayed up late with her and watched the Pajama Game. Thankfully Chloe was asleep by the time the movie was over because I am tired!

It’s been a really good day. I really enjoy staying home and doing nothing Christmas day. The house is a huge mess because I did nothing, but whatever.

Kyle had to work the second job tonight, so this afternoon before he left we took treats to some of our friends, and when we got back the kids got to open their Christmas eve presents. They always get pjs to open on Christmas eve. We didn’t always do it this way. When Kyle and I first got married and were starting our own traditions, Kyle didn’t have any input for what traditions he would like to make, so we ended up just doing what I had done with my family all my life (since that’s what I always looked forward to). And as the years went on that’s just what we did, until a few years ago when Kyle said that we should let the kids each open a present Christmas eve. However at that time we just let them pick one, which ended up making it difficult to put kids to bed right after they opened a new toy…..SO last year or the year before I got the brilliant idea that they should get jammies to open on Christmas eve, and that’s what we did this year too.

When Ethan got his open he suddenly wasn’t very excited any more:

After presents Daddy left to go to work, I fed the kids some dinner and they put their new pjs on so we could pick and lay out stockings:

Then the kids were off to bed and when they were asleep I got to spend some time to myself in a mostly clean living room to wait for Kyle to get off work. 🙂

Between 9:30 and 10 I sent Kyle a text to see how it was going at work and really to find out when he was going to be home. He was trying to finish up at work so he could come home, but he told me not to wait for him. So I just went to bed without him.

For the past couple of years I have wanted to put a window in the stairway leading down to the basement. It’s really dark and you have to use the light day or night, to be able to see your way down the stairs. So a couple of years ago we got 2 or 3 companies to come out and tell us if that was even possible, and if it was to give us a quote. The quotes we got back then ranged from $2800-$3500, and we were told that most of that was for labor.

A couple of months ago we had another window guy come out to give us a quote on getting our two broken windows replaced (they had been broken for WAY too long and we just wanted to get it done and over with), and while he was here Kyle asked if he would give us a separate quote for putting a window in the basement stairway. Well the quote this guy gave us was nearly HALF what the other companies had said a couple of years ago, and that INCLUDED getting the other two windows replaced, so we decided to go for it.

They came out yesterday to do our windows and now instead of seeing this every time I go downstairs:

I now see this:

Oh I love it! It lights up the stairway SO MUCH. And I am so happy that we were able to save up and have it put in!

Liesl and Ian sent the kids a gingerbread house kit to put together and decorate, so we decided to do that today while Kyle was home. Kyle made up the frosting and assembled the house, then the kids were really upset when we told them it needed time to dry before we actually decorated it.

After dinner we got the table all cleaned up and went to work decorating the gingerbread house. The kids thought it would be funny to make gummy bears look like they were sliding off the roof, so we got out a handful of gummy bears for them to decorate with in addition to the candies that came with the kit.

Kyle spread icing on the roof to make it look like it had snowed (and hey the gummy bears didn’t want to slide off the roof if there was no snow!)

My crazy husband, saw that I was getting ready to take a picture of him getting the house ready for the munchkins to decorate, and he decided to make a face! Then I went to the other side for a different angle and he did it again! That’s what I love about this man, he is always making me laugh!

The kids had a blast decorating the house though. And I hope that more candy was put ON the house than was consumed during the decorating. 😉

No, we don’t usually let Chloe walk on the table. But she wanted to help too, and the other side of the house was crowded and we really didn’t want her getting pushed off a chair so we just let her sit there on the table to help.

Kyle put icicles on the house too:

And the finished house:

I doubt if the candy on that house will still be there by Christmas!

PS: Thank you Liesl and Ian, and there are a bunch more pictures in the photo gallery! 😉