Christmas 2008

What a nice, relaxing day!! We all slept in...well, most of us...the girls were up by 8 or so...but they mostly meandered around upstairs, reading, playing together...hardly any fighting...I heard them run downstairs a few times with exclaims of, "There's more presents under the tree!" and "Santa ate our cookies!" I guess the didn't realize that Santa may choose to use gift bags and so, they didn't get into his gift that sat by the empty plate.

But, once I asked what Santa brought...and "Is that's Santa's gift on the bench?" They quickly ran down, pulled out the well anticipated webkins that they've been asking for, read Santa's letter, and just ran around playing with them. Mikenna's gray kitty was meowing all over!! The rest of our gifts to the girls were simple, clothes, books, polly pockets, the girls' Christmas crafts to us...and that's about it. We had talked about how our biggest Christmas gift would be our trip to Florida, DisneyWorld and the Disney Cruise, so I don't think the girls' were disappointed. In fact, I think this would have been the perfect Christmas if I would have been able to take the time and really focused on the meaning of Christmas by reading scriptures and telling Christmas stories, or even been able to do some meaningful service project for another family...All of the gifts and etc are fun, but...even if we hadn't used the upcoming vacation as an excuse for fewer gifts, Fewer gifts are going to become the norm for us. Stuff is stuff and we don't need more stuff. I'm going to try hard to remember this for next year! My parents & Aunt & Uncle came over later for breakfast. We had yummy sausage egg muffins, and lots of fruit....then the kiddos and Mike loaded up their MP3 players and Mikenna built towers with Auntie and my Dad. After a bit, we started talking about how Mike and I were going to clean the couch, and how I wished it were warm outside so I could give the couch a good scrub, and then my Dad came up with the idea to take the couch apart!! Um...HELLO!!So, here it is all taken apart. Fortunately, we were able to put it all back together and now it's all clean!! I know Aaron & Allison wouldn't have been all for this project...forgiveness is much easier than permission....

After naps and some final preparation on what we were to prepare for Christmas dinner, we headed up to Michael's parents' for dinner and a few more gifts. We received a "donation" towards our new shelf-reliance unit, rubbermaid tubs, a step stool, a cute apron for Michael from his sister, fun book marks for the girls from Jessie, magnets, hot/rice pack, yummy candy cane roca, new socks & a white shirt for Michael, a dress & Christmas dress for Kiera, a few shirts, a Christmas dress, and a few books for Mikenna, and a dress for Kassidy. (Hopefully I didnt' forget anything...)

The "worst" part of our Christmas was that I fell on some icey steps at Michael's parents...that was not a fun slip...I'm too old to be falling down....

Anyhow...I think that's it for this Christmas!