Christmas 2011- part 3

12/25- Christmas morning!!  Santa hid our stockings in the laundry room so Ozzie wouldn't get them, so we'd hoped to have a nice leisurely morning... maybe watch a couple cartoons before we started the festivities.  I wish I would have had my camera rolling when they got up and sprinted to our room.  Then they sprinted around the house screaming funny things... "What?! Where's our stockings?"  "What?! The crackers are gone!!"  It was hilarious.  We found the stockings and woke Dad up to start celebrating at 6:30am!!   :)

These first couple videos are long and not real exciting... just documenting the stocking opening...

I love that my kids can get excited about an apple!

Boaz narrated the whole morning, of course.  :)

Lucky for us, they wanted to eat their apples this morning!  I had some breakfast preparations to do, so they got to enjoy a show with their apples and new stocking stuff. 

This morning, Boaz is a farmer. 

I asked Luke if he had any requests for meals at Christmas and these muffins were it.  He'd remembered his mom making them growing up and hadn't had them for ages.  Apparently they're called French Breakfast Muffins... but he described them as white cakey muffins with lots of sugar on top.  They were delicious!

Myka staring at her dad during breakfast... one of her favorite things to do!

After breakfast, we put the boys to work hauling out the presents from behind the tree. 

Time for presents!!

Cainan got his very own Scout dog.  Boaz has one and they fight over it all the time.  My gift buying is simple these days.  I figure out what they fight over and buy a second one!

I got Luke a Ray Charles cd.  (Yes, a cd.  We're that cool.)  We watched the movie Ray not too long ago and Luke commented that there were a lot of songs he liked.  Luke surprised me and got us tickets to go see Jim Gaffigan in March!  We're going to hopefully make a date weekend out of the deal.  Hooray!! 

Boaz got robot slippers.  He likes to wear them around the house. 

Cainan's baseball slippers.  He hates wearing them.   :(    They're too padded on the bottom and feel weird to him.  Bummer...

All morning, Boaz wanted to hide the presents from us so we couldn't see what he was getting until he held it up to surprise us.  I kept explaining that we already knew what was in each box.  He didn't understand. 

The boys got lots of hands-on activities for Christmas this year. 

Myka got one present... poor thing.  It was a pair of pajamas, which she desperately needed. 

This is Ozzie's favorite day of the year.  He gets treats in his stocking and gets to unwrap a new toy. 

New magnetic counting puzzle.

And a color matching mosaic puzzle...

The boys got one big gift to share. 

Another plasma car!!!  Again, a duplicate of something we already had.  These plasma cars are so fun.  It was nice enough that we put it together and sent them out to the garage to play.  They loved racing and zooming around each other. 

We almost forgot our last gift!  They eagerly awaited the search at the top of the stairs. 

Possibly their favorite gift??  An old mattress!!  We saved our old queen mattress and turned it into a jumping area for them in the basement. 

They jump so hard and long all the time that they end up taking off shirts and rolling up pants because they're so hot.  Without fail... every time. 

I let Dad be in charge of Myka while I got a light lunch ready.  This 6:30am start was hard on him!!  :) 

Lunchtime entertainment.  These two are funny together. 

Between bites, Boaz sang us a few Christmas songs. This one is about a pork chop and a park?? :)

After lunch, NAPTIME!!! 

Christmas 2011- part 2

12/24- It's Christmas Eve!  Time for some traditions today.  After a yummy breakfast at Grandma's we came home and decorated our birthday cake for Jesus!  (Notice the cowboy hat?  Boaz has been in costume since last night.)

They got a little carried away with the sprinkles....

and when I went out of the room to grab Myka, I came back to find a couple green mouths.  Little sneaky-pants!!

The final product... Happy Birthday, Jesus!!

At lunchtime, Boaz was still in costume.  This time he was Pastor Bartlett and he was ready to preach it! 

I can't remember exactly what his whole sermon was about, but he covered the basics-- Jesus loves us, God is strong, and Mommy shouldn't make all the rules around here.   All straight from the Bible, he says! 

Dad came home and Cainan cornered him with his new nerf gun. 

We took naps then headed to our church for a 3pm Christmas Eve service.  Boaz got to sit in the service with us and enjoyed singing the songs and holding a candle.  (made me nervous!) We attempted to get a nice picture of the kids in their Christmas clothes... next to impossible, but this is what we got. 

We came home and got right to work on our dinner... homemade pizza!  We made the dough before church and let it rise while we were gone.  The boys were excited to pound it out on the tray. 

Mmmmm... pepperoni!!  Cainan ate more of them than went on his pizza. 

On goes the cheese...

And 'Ta-Da!'

Ta-Da!!

Our pizzas were delicious... it may become our new Christmas Eve tradition!  Along with our pizza, we were excited to light the last candle on our Advent wreath!  All month long we've been lighting these candles at dinner and reading a devotion.  Not sure we'll use the same devotion book next year (too over their heads!), but I think we'll carry on the tradition.  They enjoyed each week as we lit another candle closer to Christmas and especially enjoyed that they got to blow out a candle after dinner each night!

We played for awhile after dinner and then the preparations for Santa began.  This was Boaz's letter to Santa...

And without prompting, Boaz decided he needed to write a letter to Jesus, too.  (so sweet!)

Cainan set out some goldfish for Santa... and ate a few himself. 

Then we found places for our stockings!

Right after we got the boys in bed, a friend of ours called saying that he'd rented a Santa suit for the night and wondered if he could come say hello to the kids!  They were in bed, so we decided that he could come and we'd take pictures of him in our house to show the boys in the morning... 

But the boys weren't really asleep... we could still hear Boaz singing.  So, we decided we couldn't pass up this opportunity.  We sent Santa in to say hello!!

That idea may have backfired a bit... Boaz was then too wired to sleep and wondered when and how Santa was going to come back.   Cainan just stared blankly at Santa the whole time... he was half asleep and probably thought he was in some sort of weird dream. 

Santa left a really nice note for the boys- and of course, reminded them about the most important part of Christmas Day is... Jesus!!