That being said, we were sort of lame and didn't do a lot of the traditional holiday fun stuff this year. I'm not one of those fun and organized moms who does the elf on the shelf or a holiday activity every day of the advent. I was feeling a bit guilty about that a few days before Christmas and grabbed a kit for making a gingerbread house and train while I was at Sam's Club. The boys were thrilled and had a lot of fun decorating them.
Ellie was given the gingerbread man to decorate. She was interested in the decorating part for about .003 seconds.
She really only wanted to eat the candy. Poor gingerbread man didn't stand a chance.
Finally, it was Christmas Eve. We usually read the Christmas story from the scriptures on Christmas Eve, but this year I decided we should act it out in order to keep the kids' interest. I couldn't get the video to work in this post, but I'm pretty sure the grandparents are the only ones who would actually watch it anyway. It's definitely a home video we'll treasure through the years. Here's a still frame from it for you to get an idea of how it went:
When Joseph tried to take Mary with him to Bethlehem, she ran the other direction and then she cried for the rest of the video. It was still fun, though. I think it might be a new tradition. :)
After the nativity, it was time to open the traditional Christmas Eve jammies!
This picture is horribly out of focus, but I love it anyway.
On Christmas morning, the boys were nice enough to let us sleep until 7 and then we went out to see what Santa had brought.
Ellie finally woke up after the boys had opened all of their presents, so it was her turn to be the center of attention.
She "Ooooh"ed and "Aaaah"ed and squealed over every present. It was so adorable.
This picture of her totally cracks me up! She's trying to figure out how to get it to go forward, but she totally looks like she's about to run me down.
After presents, Ben made a wonderful breakfast of German pancakes.
I love this picture of Ellie snuggling her new sock monkey when it was time for her nap.
For the rest of the day, we stayed in our jammies and played with our new things. It was such a wonderful and relaxing day!
For dinner, we spent the evening with friends, eating yummy food and playing games. At the end of the night, we had a birthday cake to honor Christ's birth and we each decided on something that we were going to do to be more Christlike this year. It was a perfect way to end the day, bringing it back to the true meaning of the holiday season.
We hope you also had a joyful holiday season filled with the spirit of Christ!
1 comment:
Evan's cowlicks are awesome! Also, Ellie has so much hair now, she looks so grown up!
I'm glad you all had such a nice christmas; I loved the pics!
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