Christmas Eve & Christmas Day

Whew.  Christmas time is a busy time of year!

This year we took in the children's nativity service with Great-Grandma, and some extended family, at Great-Grandma's church downtown.

Then we headed home, and had potato soup for dinner.  (2nd year in a row - does that make it a tradition yet?!).  After dinner and some last minute present wrapping we got to the main event (in the kids opinion, at least!) - opening gifts.

Wow.  I thought I'd done a relatively good job at not going overboard, but 3 kids times too many presents = a lot of chaos and wrapping paper.  Jake was the most easily distracted.  And it wasn't even his own present distracting him!  First he wanted to open Viva's princess toy set.  Before any of his gifts were even touched.  Then he opened a puzzle and he wanted to play with it.  And not open any more gifts!  He did, finally, after everyone was done opening get into present mode and plow through his gifts.

Viva, I am happy to report, is an unwrapping champ.  So is Bentley.  He's all primed and ready for his birthday!

The kids put together some lego cars with their Daddy.  We all had apple dumplings.  The kids did NOT want to go to bed, they wanted to play with their new gifts!  Bentley even went so far as to tell me: "Santa doesn't need to come and bring me more toys, I have enough".  Out of context it sounds good, right?!  To be completely honest, though, I think this was mostly said because I told him that if he didn't head to bed Santa couldn't come.  And he was so excited about his new toys that he was willing to say anything to stay up!

Nonetheless.

We headed off to bed, and...

Santa came!

Santa was feeling generous this year.  The kids are now the owners of some fun new Duplos equipment.  Their Daddy is a lego fanatic so I think it's important to get them headed down that same track so they can properly bond with him... !

We checked out our fun loot from Santa, then headed up to Grandpa Tim and Grandma Karen's...

to open more gifts!  To play games, watch movies, and eat a delicious Christmas dinner with the whole extended family.  It was great fun!

Next year we will have to focus more on the WHAT Christmas is about.  I thought we were doing a good job, we'd read plenty of stories about the topic, had plenty of conversations, even saw the nativity... but... right before we opened presents we asked that all critical question:

"Who's birthday are we celebrating on Christmas Day?"

They looked at me blankly.  Tried "mine!!!".  Finally, after a long pause, Jake did come up with "Baby Jesus"!   Ah well.  I have a few more years to get them straightened out, right?!