Christmas 2012

On Christmas Eve we went to Jared and Kristi's house to have dinner. We had Chinese food and it was delicious! Probably my favorite Christmas Eve dinner ever. We had egg rolls, General Tso's chicken, fried rice, chow mein, and Grammy Jenna's cheeseball (which I make every year). I got ambitious and decided to make my mom's wassail recipe. I always want to make it (it's a very easy recipe), but it makes a lot of wassail and I'm always afraid I'll end up with gallons of wassail that only I will drink. It was so yummy and tasted just like home. The adults liked it and Anwyn tried it and liked it, but the rest of the kids weren't interested. That's not much of a surprise. It's a little strong and I think I didn't start liking it until I was maybe ten years old.

After dinner we did the nativity. Anwyn wrote out the script and assigned the parts herself and did a good job. After that we had crunchy ice cream balls, ice cream, and mint brownies. Then all of the children got to open a present--new pajamas. I made Kevin some pajama pants using an old pair for a pattern (I know they look way too long in the picture--I hadn't hemmed them yet), and Heidi got some footed sleepers that I found in the "clothes-she'll-grow-into" box because she has more clothes than we know what to do with.

Christmas morning was fun. Kevin had fun opening his presents, but Heidi just wanted to scarf down the candy. It was crazy. She was dripping chocolate and minty drool everywhere and we were following her around with a washcloth to try to keep it from getting all over everything. She enjoyed it so much that it was mostly worth it. The kids got penguin crackers (Aldi's knockoff of goldfish) in their stockings and thought that was pretty exciting. The struggle the rest of the day was getting them to eat real food (not a surprise). I finally managed to get Heidi to eat half a cup of applesauce for dinner. Kevin ate a little better. He didn't ration out his stocking candy as well as the rest of us, so when he was all out and saw candy in other people's stockings he kept going for it. He was so upset when the rest of us hoarded our candy. It was sad. I probably won't give up the Christmas candy tradition because I know it's fun, but it does always lead to a lot of frustration for the rest of the day.

We were blessed with many fabulous gifts from family members. We've added several books and movies to our collection, which we love. Ryan's parents gave the kids a cute play mat of "CTR Town" that has roads and buildings. They have done a lot of imaginative play with the mat. Kevin got a duplo train set from my aunt that he played with for an entire day after opening it. It must have hit the sweet spot for him since the train runs by itself, he can build and take things apart, it has people, and it has a gas tank. There are so many different things he can do with it. He has never in his life played with something for more than half an hour, so we have been amazed at how much he has enjoyed this toy.

Here are some pictures of Christmas activities throughout the month:

Decorating the tree . . .

Sunday morning photo shoot:

Christmas morning:

Reading books after Christmas presents had been opened: