Christmas 2011 Part Three - Exchanging gifts

When I was growing up, we opened gifts on Christmas eve. I loved opening gifts by the twinkle of the christmas tree, but that made Christmas the worst day of the year. So in our family, we keep the tradition of opening presents in the evening but moved it to Christmas night so that the 26th is the worst day of the year as it should be.

So, after dinner, we exchanged gifts. We started with Theo reading the Christmas story to the girls from Luke. Then we read about the three wisemen and opened our wisemen gifts - myrr was chapstick, frankinscense was scented lotion,  and gold was chocolate coins.

Then we each took turns opening gifts and singing carols. 

Christmas 2011 Part Three - Christmas Dinner

After returning from church, we had a late dinner with ham and all the fixin's.

Christmas 2011 Part Two

After opening Santa's gifts, we got dressed up and went to church. While we were all dressed up nice, we took some family photos. 

Christmas 2011 Part One - Santa gifts

Christmas 2011 began with the opening of Santa gifts. Santa doesn't normally bring $100 gifts, but I think he heard about the wonderful thing the girls did and rewarded them. Someone in our family won the American girl raffle our Mops group was doing. The girls decided to take my suggestion of giving the doll to a little girl who wasn't going to get anything for Christmas. A tough thing to do when they didn't know they were receiving dolls for Christmas.

Lizzy got a "just like me" doll. It is her first AG doll and she named her Hayley.

Katie already had a just like me doll from her 5th birthday, so she got the girl of the year, Kanani that she has been begging for all year.

2011 Christmas Decorations

 

Painting

The girls spent 4 hours today painting ceramics I found on clearance at Michael's. What a great way to spend a rainy day.

Rollerskating

Last night, we went to a carol sing at what may become our new church. After, they rented out the skating rink and we all had some fun skating.
I love how the minute the video starts, Katie fell down. Lizzy was crazy legs the whole night and spent more time on the ground than upright. (by the way, she asked "what in the WORLD are you doing?" not what it sounded like). I was lucky enough not to fall down which is good because I don't bounce as well as the kids do.

Gingerbread Houses

Last week we held our annual gingerbread house decorating party. Since the kids weren't home to enjoy making the houses with me this year, I decided to take the lazy way and buy pre-made ones. They didn't smell as good, but they looked prettier. Everyone had lots of sticky fun!