Christmas 2009

Christmas Eve dinner! We do our big meal on Christmas Eve, so we don't have to do much cooking on Christmas, but we have plenty of yummy leftovers. We always have an open invitation to Uncle Tyler. Jared made a delicious turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, cheesy broccoli, pasta salad, rolls, and a couple different pies! It was soooo good. After dinner the kids open their first gift...Christmas pj's. Then we watch "Santa Claus: The Movie" (old xmas movie Jared LOVES....with Dudley Moore and John Lithgow) and have egg nogg (diluted with milk!). The kids are usually in bed by ten. This year we had NO WRAPPING to do on Christmas Eve....yay! We told the kids they weren't allowed out of their rooms until 7, and they had to make their beds before they came out.

The picture above and below are of Kelsey & Emma opening their cellphones....yes, cellphones. I am one of those parents. Kelsey got one last year, and as you can tell from the picture, she didn't think she'd be getting a new phone this year, but boy was she excited! Why wouldn't she be, it was pink!! And it had flowers!
In this day and age, I LOVE that my girls have phones. Kelsey is old enough to tend (not Sophie, of course) so it's nice when Jared and I are out that she and I can text each other. She also had her first slumber party a few weeks ago and was able to text me all night, even at 2AM to let me know she was still up. Emma, on the other hand, had asked Santa for a phone. I was a little hesitant, but we got a great deal, so we did it.

Ashton with his "Star Wars: The Clone Wars" turbo tank...this was high on the list for Santa.

Oh, these two little ones are SO easy to shop for! Conner & Mallory got plenty of new coloring books, markers, crayons and puzzles. Mallory also got new Barbies, Cabbage Patch baby twins, and My Little Pony stuff. Conner increased his collection of "Star Wars: Galactic Heroes" toys with two new ships and new characters.

We started to loose Jared by 8:30, but he snapped out of it.

If you look closely at the picture below, you can see Mallory has a tear on her cheek. My 3 older kids had purchased gifts for everyone at their school's "Santa's Workshop". Ashton bought Conner a fake spider. I HATE spiders and some of my kids have inherited that (or have seen me freak out so now they freak out). Jared and I got worried when he was opening it because Kelsey (who helped wrap it) kept saying, "Don't be scared, ok? It's not real". Conner didn't freak out, but I wish I had video of Mallory when she saw it. She wouldn't leave Jared's lap the rest of the morning. We ended up throwing it away the next day after Conner realized it was fun to terrorize his sister.

Another fun story this Christmas: Jared found some great recipes for breakfast, that he put together the night before and then we baked it in the morning. One of them bubbled over and the oven started to fill with smoke. When Jared opened the door to slide a cookie sheet under it, it set off our smoke alarm, which is wired to our security system. LOUD beeping filled the house, Jared silenced it & the security company called to ask if they needed to send the fire dept. Ooops!
We hope you all had a great Christmas like we did! With a new baby, it was a great excuse to stay home and have visitors come to us. We got to visit with both of our parents, two of Jared's aunts, and have brothers, sisters and cousins come visit. We love this time of year!