Christmas 2010

I hope everyone had a lovely Christmas!  Ours was really nice.  Here is how our Christmas went:

We started the day with gathering around the Christmas tree and nativity and singing a couple of carols.  Then we wrote down our gift to Jesus that year.  Gifts included things such as, "No teasing", "Be obedient", "Help others when I see they need help", "Say kind things", "Don't pull out Tico's whiskers", and others. 

(Writing down our gifts - the camping chairs were from Santa, we don't usually have them in the front room).

We then talked about the significance of the gifts that the wise men took to baby Jesus and why they chose the three gifts they chose.  Each of the children also got three gifts.  They were really happy with their presents. 


Spice's favorite gift was a watch.  She squealed with delight when I told her that she could set alarms on for reminders.  Funny girl. 

Spice pulling out her new wrap-around skirt that Little Miss made for her.  She wore it to church yesterday and she looked very pretty.

Bud told his primary teacher that his favorite gift was his pajama pants and shirt (Bazinks made the pants - with a lot of help from me).  His teacher replied, "Really?!  What kind of pants and shirt were they?"  He described them and then he told her he liked his new basketball hoop and basketball a lot too. 

Bud with his new pants.  He loves them because he says he feels like he can really move in them and do Kung Fu.

Little Miss' favorite present was a hamster cage.  We'll be picking out a hamster for it today.  Getting her a hamster was a last minute decision.  She had been asking for one, and this little girl rarely asks for anything, but we had told them that we wouldn't buy them any pets until they were 8 years old and could be responsible for them.  As I thought about it, though, I realized that Little Miss is a very responsible 6 (almost 7) year old.  She does all her jobs almost always without a complaint (unless I spring something on her that she wasn't expecting).  So I talked to Rock about it and we decided to go ahead and get her one.  She is so exited and she can't stop talking about going to the store and picking out a hamster.

Little Miss with the scripture bag that Spice made for her.  Spice is the only one that I didn't have to help at all with the project (except for answering a few measurement questions).  It turned out really cute and, even though you can't tell from the picture, Little Miss was really excited about it.  She also made her a hair flower and a bracelet.

Bazinks' favorite present was probably his binoculars.  He thinks it's pretty cool to see things closer up or further away.  All of the kids were really exited about their binoculars.  We'll have to get out soon, maybe to the duck pond, to use them.

Ray's favorite present was his Skittles.  He got Skittles and warm booties, but he did seem quite a bit more exited about the Skittles.

I got the complete Jane Austen Illustrated Classic set.  I'm very exited about it.  Rock got his present months ago (a trainer for his bike), but he also got a candy bar so that he could have something to open on Christmas :-)

After opening presents, Rock and Bud went to the garage to put the basketball hoop together.  I made Christmas dinner with the other kids helping on and off.  We got to listen to Spice on the Mormon Channel from their Temple Square performance.  That was really neat for her to hear herself on the radio.  Our family in Florida listened to her too.

In the afternoon, we went sledding with some friends.  That was really fun except our tubes from Santa did not hold the air very well and we kept having to blow more air into them.  Santa must have gotten us cheap tubes.  I'm going to try to exchange them today, or to call the company since the tubes say not to return them to the store.   The kids loved tubing down the hill though and they were a lot braver and went a lot higher than I thought they would.  Even Little Miss was jumping off ramps in her tube.  They can't wait to go again.  Several of them said it was the highlight of the day.

When we got home, my little brother and his girlfriend were here.  We ate dinner together and then Rock took them to the airport so they could head to Florida.  It was nice to have some of our extended family with us on Christmas, even if for just a little while.  The kids and I cleaned up while he was gone and played Apples to Apples, they also performed the Nativity for our family in Florida as they watched on my mom's iphone.  When Rock got home, we got some hot cocoa and went downstairs to watch The Nativity Story.  I really liked it, but the kids thought it was too scary.  I think since the producers knew that everyone already knew the story, they had to add little surprises here and there to keep people on the edge of their seats.  There were just some sad images here and there and the kids kept closing their eyes because the scary music would warn them.  The movie starts with the killing of the children so that kind of set a scary tone for them for the rest of the movie as well.  When it was over, they all agreed that they liked the version in the scriptures better.  Too cute.

We kept right on celebrating yesterday and listened to Christmas music and read Christmas stories by the fire.  Today, we shall have to spend the morning cleaning.  I think they'll do it pretty quickly though, in their anticipation for going to the store and picking out Little Miss' new hamster.

I hope you are all enjoying the holidays!  I never got around to emailing Christmas cards... maybe I'll do some New Years cards?  We'll see...  Any recommendations for a good type of hamster, by the way?