Christmas Day 2011

This year for Christmas there were some first for our family. First, Christmas was on a Sunday. I don't remember having a Christmas on this day before. Luckily for us we had church at 1:00 so Christmas morning wasn't any different. Although we only had an hour of church, not only were my kids tired but everyone else's were as well. The primary sang 5 songs for the Christmas program and I had 3 kids fall asleep in their chairs on the stand! It was very amusing.
Second, every kid got a present from Santa and P.J's from us the night before but all the other presents were homemade. I really enjoyed making scarves, hand warmers, white boards and with Denyces' help quiet books for the three little girls. Each kid also precipitated in Secret Sibling. We started this in our family last year. You pick a sibling's name and make a homemade gift. We had so much fun last year and it is what inspired the homemade theme this year. Garrison made Denyce a wall hanging with her initials, Kwynn gave Lily a garden snow globe, Mason made a pillow for Garrison, Lily had Kwynn and made her a match game, Aubrey made Mason a big Jenga set and Denyce made a box for Aubrey that was filled with musical instruments. My favorite gift was from Dwayne and the kids. They took my 12 favorite pictures that I've taken and put them together in a calender. It looks great! The boys favorite gift had to be the bottle rocket launchers that Dwayne made them. We all had fun working the pump and watching the 2 liter bottles rocket into the sky.

As you can see from the pictures, it was still dark outside when we got up because it was at 5:30 in the morning! Normally we make the kids wait until 6:00 but for some reason we let it go this year. Maybe we were all excited for Christmas this year. After opening presents we had our traditional cinnamon rolls for breakfast and watched A Christmas Story. Garrison found it real funny this year. Hopefully memories were made and everyone had a great Christmas. My kids are already looking forward to next year!