Merry Christmas!!

We had a wonderful Christmas this year. We didn't have a lot planned so it was nice to just be relaxed together as a family. On Christmas Eve, we had our friends, the Struck's, come over for pizza and games. It was nice to visit with them. Then at about 9:30 the gang (minus me, Chloe and Oliver...they were sleeping) got on their snow stuff and went sledding. That might have to be a new family tradition! They came back laughing and giggling about Sam going down the "Slide of Death"!! We have a great sledding hill at the local park and on this HUGE hill, there is a metal slide that goes down the length of the hill. I guess Sam put his plastic, hard sled on the metal slide and went lickety-split down the slide! Dave said he'd never seen such terror on a full grown man before! Dave was laughing for days at the thought of it!
We went to bed a bit late, but before we did we put out some "cereal and milk" for Santa. Dave told Oliver that Santa was getting kind of tired of cookies, but that he had heard that Santa was CRAZY for Golden Grahams! It must have been a big hit because there was a lot missing from the box the next morning!

Connor was the first one up at 6:00a.m. I was pleased that they slept as late as they did. (My poor sister Natalie was woken up a 3:30 in the morning!!) He ran downstairs to sneek a peek, but Santa was one step ahead of him and had everything wrapped up!

Oliver wasn't too far behind Connor! He was so excited he started to make crazy signs with his hands!!!

The boys all went into Chloe's room to try and wake her up! I thought they weren't going to have much success...she was not wanting to wake up! She didn't have much of a memory from last year to know what was going to happen if she woke up and went down stairs.

But finally after a few minutes of begging by the boys, she managed to pull herself out of bed!

The kids were all amazed at the piles of presents. They were most "impressed" with the size of Chloe's present! They said, "It's bigger than her!!!"
(It would be days before the living room was as clean as this moment !)

It didn't take Chloe too long to not be tired and ornery when she saw her stocking full of goodies and treats. Her eyes were twinkly and full of wonder!

Stuart with his stocking!

Oliver looking forward to a bubble bath!

Interestingly enough, Connor was pretty stoked about the Axe deodorant he got in his stocking...whatever!

"Tiny tot's with their eyes all a glow...."

Oliver's big present was a new bike.

Connor was hoping for a Rip-stick! (I'm hoping he doesn't break any bones on that thing!)

Stuart got a new MP3 player. His old one (the one he had for a month) went through the laundry at my mom's house. Hopefully he'll be more carefull with it!

Here's Miss Chloe with her new kitchen! She loves this thing!

The boys playing Rock Band!

Connor and Oliver playing Dance Dance Revolution.

We really enjoyed our day together. After we let the kids play with their toys for a while, we had some brunch. We made oatmeal pancakes, bacon, cinnimon rolls and orange juice. The rest of the day we snacked on treats and left over pizza. We were all so full and kind of sick of food that we weren't in the mood to eat our Christmas dinner we had planned! Oh well! No one was coming over and we didn't have to be any where so we said, "What the heck! We'll have Christmas dinner tomorrow!" And that's just what we did! We had steak, baked potatoes, raspberry pretzel salad, veggies and Emily's Blue Ribbon Rolls! We were too full for dessert so we'll have that another night during our vacation.
I love that fact that our Christmas this year was so "low pressure". It was so fun to just relax and do what we wanted without having to worry about entertaining or going somewhere or keeping the house spotless. I LOVED IT!!!
I'm so grateful for this time of year where we can spend time with the ones we love and to worship the baby, Jesus Christ.