Christmas at Home

On Christmas Eve, Lydia was very happy to be wearing a fancy dress. For some reason, when she poses for pictures, she leans over a little. Here she is standing up straight beside of Wesley. We went to the children's Christmas Eve service at our church. At the end when everyone sings Silent Night, they pass out glow sticks instead of candles. The kids love the glow sticks!

We invited two families from our neighborhood to join us for dinner. I put beef barbeque in the slow cooker in the morning and macaroni and cheese in the oven on timed bake before we left for church. We also locked up the cats and set the table (for 12) for dinner. This made everything go very smoothly when we got home. One family brought Asian coleslaw and the other family brought a spinach salad. It was a wonderful dinner.

I made Old Fashioned Carrot Cake with Maple Cream Cheese Icing for dessert. After singing Happy Birthday to Jesus, we let Wesley and Lydia each blow out the candles. The other two kids (who are younger) weren’t interested in blowing them out.

It was so much fun having company for dinner on Christmas Eve. I hope to make it a tradition. Hopefully the military won't move our friends away next year!

For Christmas breakfast I made homemade Cinnamon Rolls. Yummy! I think this is the start of a new tradition.

We had to wake Lydia up a little after 8:00. She almost never sleeps in! My dad said that Christmas morning was the one time a year that he and my mom always had to wake me up.

After breakfast, I read the nativity story from the second chapter of Luke. We let the Little People act it out. Afterwards, the kids wanted to play with the nativity set a little before opening presents.

I ordered the kids new hooded towels for Christmas. I am tired of them always arguing over who gets which towel. I let Lydia pick out the towel she wanted from the website and she really wanted to get Wesley the shark towel which is perfect for him. Both kids were happy to get their towels and wanted to put them on immediately!

Here is Wesley with his favorite gift - a $10 box of plastic sea animals.

Here is Lydia dancing to the music from one of her gifts - a dancing flower. She kept telling us that she wanted a flower that played music and danced. This was all she ever said that she wanted. Thankfully, Amazon sells such a thing.

She also received some princess dress up costumes. She loves the movie Snow White.

Here is Lydia in another dress-up outfit working on her alphabet train puzzle.

Wesley really likes the Tag reader. It was great on our road trip.

We were blessed to have my parents with us for the Christmas week. I missed getting very many photos of them on Christmas day though. This one is from the Gaylord National.

It was fun to spend most of the day just playing with the kids.