Our First Charlottesville Christmas

I can't believe the kids are back in school tomorrow!  We had a really nice vacation, and I had a lot of fun, but I will admit that I'm okay with getting back into our routine again.  (And I won't miss taking all five kids to Costco with me!)

This year we had our first Christmas without any additional family here.  I was kind of excited to just have it be our little family, but Craig was worried about how things would go without any grandparents around.  So, of course, I spent a few minutes Christmas morning crying because I missed my family (in my defense, I haven't seen three of my sisters since April!!!) and Craig had a great time.  Typical.

But despite those few tears, we really did have a wonderful Christmas.  Craig spent the two days ahead of time baking up a storm while I made numerous trips to the grocery store to get all the things we forgot to have on hand.  (It's lucky the grocery store is really close!)  And we simplified things some (like having Pillsbury cinnamon rolls instead of making them from scratch) and made a lot of our Christmas dinner the day ahead.

Bark, Spritz cookies, fudge, salted caramel Rice Krispie trests, fudgy toffee bars, and twixster cookies.  Yum.  All of it-- yum.

Christmas eve, we followed my family's tradition of ordering pizza for dinner and eating off paper plates.  Then we took plates of cookies to friend and neighbors.  I wouldn't have minded Christmas caroling as we went, but Craig and Bentley weren't thrilled with that idea, so we just wished everyone a Merry Christmas and hurried on our way.  I'm sure they were busy enough that they weren't sad to not be sung to!

We wanted to look at Christmas lights while we were driving around, too, and managed to find this awesome house not too far from us!  They were so decorated we went ahead and parked the car so we could walk through it all, and right at the entrance was Santa!  This was great, since I hadn't managed to have the kids visit Santa at all.  We even got a pretty decent picture with him, all things considered!

I love Camille's leggings!

When we got home, we sang all the Christmas songs we could think of and read from Luke 2 together.  The kids opened their Christmas pajamas from my parents and I had even managed to get a pair for Craig, too-- pure luck that I saw some when I was at Target after we'd ordered them for the kids!  Bentley and Kendra put out cookies and milk for Santa (and a carrot for the reindeer) and we sent them all to bed.  It was a perfect evening.

I didn't get any sleep that night.  I had a hard time falling asleep at all, and then I kept hearing a bedroom door opening and shutting.  I finally investigated and discovered Kendra sitting on her bed crying.  She wasn't sure what time it was, and with a full moon shining in her window was worried that she might be missing Christmas morning.  I assured her that we wouldn't let her miss it, and tucked her back into bed.  An hour later Ryder was awake, and a few hours after that Camille wanted a bottle and Colton was awake.

So I was very bleary eyed all day.  But opening presents with the kids was perfect: they took turns nicely, they got excited over everything they opened (yes, even the underwear and socks in their stockings!) and they were just polite and happy.  We had our (Pillsbury) cinnamon and orange rolls for breakfast.  Craig made a turkey and I made a ham for dinner (that's what we call "compromise").  We both spent a lot of time on the phone with our families. 

Smallest present goes to Bentley!  (It was a paper informing him that we will take him to see the new Star Wars movie!)

Colton with a new airplane

Ryder is excited for his "Winja Turtles"

Kendra with the new stuffed animal rooster my Mom sent for our chickens!

There was one pretty funny mishap.  Craig and my Mom usually publish all my blog posts for the year in a book and we got a bit of a surprise when this year it looked like this:

Not our family.

In defense of the blog book company, this family is eerily similar to our family: they're Mormon, have five kids (three boys, two girls) and chickens.  They just aren't us.  And the Dad in this family is the bishop, so let's hope that doesn't happen to us!  Anyway, it was pretty funny opening this present.  Hopefully MY blog book will be arriving soon...
  
Other than that, it was a wonderful day.  Exactly how you want Christmas to be!