Christmas!!!

And finally we had arrived at December 23rd!  So close to the big day!  Unfortunately, I had to do my grocery shopping that day.  I woke up very much not excited about that.  But Costco now has earlier hours for Executive Members (which you better believe I'm one!), so I managed to get in and out before the doors opened to the masses at 10am.  Go me!  And then the rest of the day was mostly spent wrapping presents and making yummy food for dinner.  So not too bad.

At some point I think we forced the kids to go outside, and ended up with this amazing picture!

I'd gotten a couple of gingerbread village kits from Target, so the kids spent some time putting them together:

(Notice that Kendra is using a hot glue gun to assemble hers!)

It was a pretty low-key day, which made me happy.

Christmas Eve is always busy-- we were still wrapping presents, and also making a ton of food ahead of time for Christmas dinner (which is basically Thanksgiving 2.0, plus ham and minus the homemade rolls). 

At some point Craig fell asleep while the kids were watching Elf again (since Bentley had missed it earlier in the month when we watched) and I just loved how his clothes were an inversion of Zooey Deschanel's, so I had to snap a picture.  Isn't this hilarious?  I especially like how Zooey looks skeptical of it all here!  (Craig's shirt, for the record, says, "My favorite color is Christmas lights" which totally fits him!)

In the evening we ordered pizza, and drove around looking at Christmas lights.  We sang carols for a long time, read Luke 2, and then finally opened our Christmas jammies!!!

Craig's idea this year was to get everyone an ugly Christmas sweater with something they loved, so Bentley has a dabbing Puerto Rican Santa, I've got killer whales, Camille has chinchillas, Kendra has a capybara, Craig has a scuba diving Santa, Colton's says, "Bah Humpug!" and Ryder's features a trombonist popping a trumpeter in the head!  Everyone was THRILLED with theirs, so well done, Craig!!!  (And many thanks to my parents for footing the bill for this fun tradition!)

(Kendra was kind of hiding behind everyone, so here's another picture where you can actually see her!)

And then we ended with me reading "The Night Before Christmas" to everyone!  I sure do love all our Christmas Eve traditions!

Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night!

The kids weren't allowed to wake us up until 7am, and Bentley must be growing up because he allowed them to dash down the stairs youngest to oldest for (I think?) the first time ever!

And then we were mostly opening Christmas presents all morning!  The kids are hilarious now, because they don't want to finish opening, so they'll constantly try to get everyone else to open their presents first while dragging their heals about opening their own.  So it takes a very long time, but it sure is a lot of fun!

Bentley really likes Doc Hudson from Cars, so he was genuinely excited about this gift

At some point we stopped to eat Cinnamon Twists, a new recipe from Mel's Kitchen Cafe that I was excited to try out.  Craig had made them the night before, but they didn't really rise quite right in the morning and didn't turn out at all.  It was so disappointing!  Fortunately, I'd gotten a bunch of the canned Pillsbury Cinnamon Rolls just in case, so we popped those in the oven instead and it was fine.  I'm still hopeful that those Cinnamon Twists could be amazing if done right, but who knows when we'll ever bother trying again...  Maybe for in April for General Conference...

Ryder's favorite gift

And his second favorite (this is a tiny clicky fidget-- what was Santa thinking???)

This girl loves her chinchillas!

When we finally finished with our presents, I got to take a shower, and then Craig and I spent most of the rest of the day cooking!  (I'm sure I snuck off and grabbed a nap at some point!)  It was an absolutely beautiful day, with temperatures in the mid-60s, so I did make a point of spending a few minutes sitting on the porch swing and also walking down the block and back.  How sad to get such a beautiful day when you don't have much time to go outside and enjoy it!

But it was a wonderful, happy day.  There's really nothing quite so magical as Christmas, even when you're a grown up!