Christmas Morning 2011

I hope you and your family had a very Merry Christmas! I am so far behind on blogging I may never catch up. The Christmas trees are still in my pantry, and I still have a houseful of laundry, cement dust, half-done flooring, and children. But I needed to take a little break and blog for a bit, so I'm going to spend the next week or two on the blog catching up on Christmas and the 500 pictures that go with it.

We kicked off our Christmas with Brandon participating in FIVE candlelight Christmas Eve services at church, starting with one on the 23^rd. All six of us went the afternoon on Christmas Eve, and Dane got to read part of the Christmas story in service while I spent the hour wrestling with Harper and trying to keep the kids from setting the chairs on fire with their candles. Wrestling match and fire hazards aside, I love Christmas Eve services at our church. Who am I kidding? I love pretty much everything about our church. Especially the hot high school youth minister. ;)

Christmas morning was spent at our little house, with it’s floorless living room and tiny trees. I justified not putting up the big tree this year because I wasn’t sure exactly when the repair work would start, and I didn’t want the possibility of having to put our big tree and all of the decorations away before Christmas. So we had sad little small trees, and I missed my big tree and all the pretty lights a lot this year. In hindsight, since Harper spent most of her waking moments disassembling and/or eating ornaments, it was probably best that she had a relatively limited selection this year.

Anyhoo. Chrismas morning.

Does everyone make their kids wait on the stairs until just the precise moment that you want them to come down? My kids aren’t real big fans of this practice.

And no, we don’t have cute-sy matching Christmas pajamas that our kids open for the first time on Christmas Eve so they have something cute to wear when they unwrap gifts. Their cheap mommy doesn’t want to buy 4 new sets of pj’s when they have PLENTY of pajamas to wear.

Santa surprised the girls with a princess tent filled with baby doll stuff,

and the boys got jerseys and a Nintendo DS.

Last year the boys also got Nintendo DS’s, but Aidan’s had been a first generation model that Santa had scored on the cheap, and it broke a few months ago. Santa utilized Craigslist again this year, but he got a newer model in much better condition this go around. They have LOVED each having their own, and we have LOVED not hearing them fight over the single DS. Christmas joy abounds.

The girls also benefited from impulse-purchase Princess shirts in their stocking, and they were a big hit on Christmas morning.

I want to apologize in advance for everything about this picture:

The pantless child, the giant Tinkerbell, the pose, the expression on her face. You can go ahead and start praying for Future 15-year old Harper.

A few hours later, we loaded up the van until nothing else would possibly fit into it, and we headed up to Ft. Worth to see Brandon’s family for a few days. More to come on that later.