Our Christmas morning

Our Christmas morning

We had our Christmas morning today. This year, Taylor will be with Nikki the early part of Christmas day. When this happens, we always do ours early so we're all together for opening presents. We would have done it on Christmas eve morning, but since I have to be at church at 8:30 for worship practice, it just wasn't practical to try to cram everything into tomorrow morning. We surprised the kids having everything out when they woke up. They were expecting to do it tomorrow. :) It was so much fun watching their faces. We let them have all of their birthday presents from us too since all of them were big and we were tired of hiding them!! :)

(btw, the pictures are for the benefit of out of town grammy's, grandma's, papa's, poppy's and great mimi's and great papa's -- it's just a whole lot of "variations of the delighted face". lol)

After the presents were opened, Tom and I let the kids play while we took a nap. :) About midmorning we all got around and went out together to enjoy my grandma's gift to us, Christmas brunch! We were all famished by 11 so it sure was good!! We were lazy the rest of the day, playing with the kids, watching football and the like. Finally about 4 we all got up and did individual 15 minute scrambles in separate rooms to get the house all put back in order. It was fun and got the house in great shape!

As a reward for helping, Chandler helped me make puppy chow and I let Taylor make sandart cookies all by herself! It's a fun way for her to use her fraction skills. :) After dinner, we snacked on our culinary handiwork and watched a Veggie Tales Christmas movie. Before they went to bed, we talked about the movie. It was cool to know that they really do grasp the fact that presents are fun, but they are only secondary to the true meaning of Christmas. Then we carried on a tradition from my family, and turned out all the lights in the house except for the tree lights and sat around the living room singing Christmas hymns. I had to teach the kids some of words of the verses... which appalled me. lol... but I guess it does take years of exposure to get them all down!! :)

Ok, I'm heading to bed! Happy happy Christmas, everyone!

Oh just a heads up, there's going to be some GREAT old Christmas classics on the Turner Movie Classics channel over the next week or so. I have about 8 of them set to tivo. Bishop's Wife, White Christmas, I Remember Mama, Meet Me in St. Louis.... oh the simplicity of yesteryear. sigh.... You can stop laughing now, Tom... Stephanie.... :)