Christmas Day

Christmas Eve went by way too fast. I thought I stayed up late til about 1 or 1:30am but I then found out Joe was up til 5am putting together presents, which included some of mine.

(a door mounted pull out trash can by the sink, and the kids broke off the cabinet piece under my bathroom sink, so Joe fixed it and replaced it now so now it opens and has a storage tray. But I love how he wrapped everything too. Funny the things I get so excited about these days).


Once Santa came and got everything put together...who knew how exhausting Santa's job is for one house with 4 kids?!?




And we had church at 9am!!

I didn't know how that was going to work since my kids have been sleeping til about then every day of the break (which I am loving) so I knew waking up and opening presents was out of the question before church. So I assumed we would get up, look at stockings, maybe open one gift or just see the ones that were too big to wrap, eat breakfast, and get ready for church. My alarm was set for 6:30 but of course I woke up in my sleep, like I do when I'm really tired, and turned it off. I woke up again at 8am wondering how on earth we would even be able to get ready for church in time. We took a quick shower and then ran up and woke all the kids up, minus Audrey, we let her sleep, and came down and looked through stockings. I put breakfast in the oven as soon as I got up (luckily I had prepared it the night before), and then they hurried and opened one present and started getting ready for church. I realized there was no time to eat so I turned off the oven a few minutes before it was ready and just left it in there until we got back from church. Luckily it was nicely cooked and still warm by the time we got back.



As soon as we got back, we got back in our pjs, ate breakfast, and started the opening.







Pretty soon the room and entire entryway looked like this.



Did I mention we were hosting Christmas dinner at our house with 2 other families? At least they brought most of the food. So we finished opening presents around 1:30 and were expecting people at 3:30. Luckily that changed to 4 so I had a little more time to pick up and get things ready.

(Hannah was the only one who wouldn't join in on the picture of the kids)


We enjoyed a yummy dinner with friends, and by the time we left we were pretty much exhausted. Oh and Joe never once took a nap or rested after getting 3 hours of sleep. I don't know how he does it at least once monthly without sleeping but I'm glad he can do it. We pretty much cleaned up, played with toys a little longer, called family, and went to bed.

It was our first Christmas home as just our family! I think it was a great success thanks to being spoiled from all of our family that wasn't with us!