Merry Christmas!

I really like Christmas Eve on being on Sunday. We were able to go to sacrament meeting, partake of the sacrament and then listen to and sing Christmas songs. The only speaker was the bishop at the end of the meeting. Then we all went home to spend the day with family. 

My Sunday bunch after church. 

We went to my parents for our Christmas FHE. I really don't want to give up that part of Christmas. It's important my kids act out or read the Christmas story to grow up understanding why we even celebrate Christmas. So that's why we were at mom's for a couple hours before heading to Morale's for dinner. When we had just arrived to Grandview it began to snow. 

Once it started snowing a little harder the kids and I went out to see it. Something about needing to catch a snowflake on your tongue. 

We saw a trail of these little prints. The kids started saying it was Santa's reindeer. :) (not deer prints but seeing a long trail of them did make me wonder what they were.)

That's real snowflakes on our hair! It looks like it could be fake, don't be fooled!

My beautiful girls I can't believe in just a couple short months both of them will be in Young Women at church. I kinda wish I could make them little again. Things are a bit simpler then. No school, friends with everyone, the only concern was making sure they were fed and happy. 

Before we opened any Christmas gifts we let the birthday kids open their birthday gifts. The plan to go out to dinner on their birthday fell through because others weren't able to make it. So we had a short birthday celebration before our Christmas celebration. I love the expressions on Bel and Jaime's faces. They both thought their gifts were pretty cool. The shirt Bel has was from us and the amazon gift card Jaime received from Bel. 

Marcus had recently been given some fun new gadgets for work, one being this Virtual Reality set up. Watching those use it was pretty funny. Chris was trying to pick things up, shoot targets, and other things. Being the ones who can't see what he's looking at or doing unless watching on the computer screen, he looks pretty silly. 

Aidan tried it too. He wasn't as fun to watch since he just played Minecraft so he wasn't moving around as much. Just using the handles almost like a regular game controller. But when you saw him just sitting on the kitchen floor, facing the cabinets he looked a little odd. haha

Liandrew gets all the attention. He's such a cute baby! Martin and Diana's oldest and youngest grandchildren right here. 

Ready to open gifts!

After gifts and playing with new things and visiting we needed to head home. It had been snowing all day and still hadn't let up any. It wasn't accumulating a ton but we knew the roads weren't going to be plowed yet. We hit the road at 9pm. Traffic was moving pretty slow. We went 50-55 most of the way. By the time we got past Benton City the freeway was no longer visible so driving slowed a bit more. Getting into the Trip-Cities worried me the most. When there's supposed to be 3 lanes of traffic but you can't see the lines, drivers do some crazy things! Jaime did a good job being aware of what the others were doing and got us home safely at 10pm. 

We opened our Christmas pajamas and laid out our stockings for Santa before heading to bed. Tyler's were the only pjs I got around to making. I had some fabric for Olivia's already too but I didn't get to it. Aidan's I've had sitting in my closet a couple years waiting for him to grow in to. Looks like he could have waited another year for them. ;) So I bought Lindsey's and Olivia's this year. They were all excited with what they were given. 

Christmas morning came early! My kids have never woken up super early on Christmas morning. They usually slept till 7 or later. Something really excited Lindsey and she woke up at 4:50! She was kind and waited until 5am to wake the others. LOL At 5:10am I heard them. At 5:35 they came in to wake Jaime and I up to come see what they received at their stocking. Jaime and I were up until midnight so it goes without saying that we were pretty tired. But we got up, saw what all the kids got then we opened gifts under the tree. By 7am everyone was doing their own thing so I got up and went back to bed for another two hours. Hahaha. 

The magical Christmas Eve snow gave us a beautiful white Christmas!

Lindsey playing with the Jedi virtual reality. This was given to all four kids by Bel and Chris. 

Jaime gave me this beautiful picture. He's a romantic in a quiet way. Not visually or vocally for others to see but what he does for me is always done with thoughtfulness.

Lindsey loves Legos!

Olivia received more Calico Critters and Aidan received more Legos. It seriously amazes how much these kids have. Hahaha. They're well loved and their family enjoys giving to them. 

Later in the afternoon we headed back to Grandview to have Christmas dinner at my parents house and then open our gifts from them and give them their gifts from us. 

As you can see I didn't take very many pictures this year. I didn't get a picture of the kids with all they received, I like to do that so in the future they'll be able to look back and remember. I didn't get any pictures of Tyler! He was probably never still long enough for me to get any. :)

Today I was gone for most of the day so it was just Jaime and the kids home. They went out to enjoy some play in the snow. It's no where near as much snow as what we had last year but it was enough for us to have a white Christmas. That's really all that matters anyway, right?