Christmas 2016- 5

The plan for Monday, the day after Christmas was the Dragon/Princess birthday party for all of the December birthday kids. Unfortunately I was sick, in bed that day. But...I still have pics of all the festivities :) Everyone else took care of the kids and the party. Audrey planned the Dragon/Secret Room part, for the big boys and some activities for the little boys. Annie, Alison, and Ashley took care of the princess party. Annie made two awesome cakes. Audrey planned a "dragon lunch". The other adults helped with kid supervision ;) We had reserved the plantation house for the main part of the party and then back to our house for lunch. The December birthdays are Hazel, Owen, Jaden, and Savie...and Micah :) Here are some of the fun pics, from an awesome day...that I missed :(

Christmas Day NIGHT :)

After all of the gifts...I worked on dinner! We had a gentleman in our ward smoke three turkeys for us, so all I had to do was warm up the turkey. I also did stuffing, mashed potatoes, green beans, cranberry salad, sweet potatoes, tossed salad etc. I didn't make my usual pies, because we planned to have cupcakes for dessert, as part of the birthday party for Jesus. After dinner we wanted to do the nativity story with the kids. Annie and I hunted around for some costumes. (Luckily, I still had a tub of costumes that a lady in our ward had for the Christmas party) That activity went pretty well, outside, on the driveway...until the lambs started running around, with the shepherds running after them...then everything got crazy and turned into a lipsinc, song and dance party! We eventually did have the cupcakes with candles...but it was abit windy for that. It was a fun evening for the kids though. (Hailey and Jaden were Mary and Joseph. Eli and Owen were shepherds. The lambs were Dallin, Hazel, and Noah. The star was Evie. The wise men were Nathan, Nicholas, and Jared. Emmy and Savie were angels.)

Christmas Day- 2016

Since Christmas was on Sunday, we had a few linguistics to work out...like Santa and church :) After much discussion on "Santa Gifts"... we worked out a plan for most of the gifts to be here on Sunday morning, but everyone go to church and then open gifts when we got home. I planned for everyone to pack their own "snack-lunch-bag" to eat in the car on the way home...no wasting time for lunch :) (and that was a fun idea, for all of the kids to pack their own bag. I had small bottles of water and lots of snack items to choose from. There were also a few leftover Subway sandwiches in the refrig at church.) Also, Sunday at church was special...our family did two of the musical numbers for Sacrament meeting. The kids singing "Away in a Manger" was especially interesting with Eli holding a microphone and leading the way ;) His little "asleep" verses were not very lullaby - lol. Anyway...once we got home it was gifts, gifts, and more gifts. Soon after the huge pile of gifts upstairs was opened...our friend John Simmons drove the mule down the driveway, with MORE gifts. (Those gifts were the ones from Baba and Papa, delivered by Santa's, Texan, helper. It was awesome. This was my second favorite activity). In the very last picture, you can almost see the great surprised look on Hailey's face when she realized there were gifts in the back of the mule :)