Yes, it’s waaaaay past Christmas but I realized that I hadn’t shared any details from our Christmas celebration! You’ll forgive me right?? Do you want to hear the details? If so, just hang on to your hat and keep on reading!
Our Christmas started in the perfect and most appropriate place- CHURCH! Our church had 6 services and we weren’t picky about the time we went so we pulled into the parking a few minutes before noon on Christmas Eve. As you can clearly see, the sanctuary was all decked out and the music was fun, loud and oh so traditional- I LOVE those Christmas carols!! I found out later that all 6 services were full (800 seats in each service- WOW) and that they had to use the overflow Chapel!! Amazing!! Our fairly new tradition on Christmas Eve evening is to go out for Chinese food, recreating the movie “A Christmas Story.” No we didn’t order the duck!!
I tried very hard to embrace the beautiful mess that I saw growing in our mudroom. Yay, all of the kids were home!!
Well, it wouldn’t be Christmas morning if we didn’t have our special apple craisin french toast! Sweet Pea and I made it together the night before and we just popped it in the oven to cook while everyone in the house was just starting to wake up and pull themselves together. When the kids were little we started the gift opening at 7 am. It’s so funny that we have now pushed that time back to 9 am!! Oh, how smart these kids are!!
The gift opening is always fun! Our kids draw names and at this time they find out who bought for them. Stockings are opened first, then the gifts and everyone opens at the same time so it’s mighty LOUD with excitement around here. Gift wrap is often balled up and thrown, there are sometimes squeals of pure JOY and hopefully we’ll catch a few “Thank yous” in the mix too!”
Sometimes we exploit our dogs…
They love to lay in the pile of balled up wrapping paper! Nesting??
Clearly, we had good boys and girls at our house and we had a wide range of gifts!
To keep the momentum going, we played some games. This was a particularly fun one. I described what to draw, step by step and the players drew it without looking. They received points for details such as drawing the presents directly UNDER the Christmas tree. Some did an excellent job, others look like they were preschoolers! Ha!
Meal prep started late morning. These fabulous girls peeled 10 pounds of potatoes- score!! I’m sure you’ve figured out by now that we didn’t starve. Everyone contributed which made the meal easy, breezy!
The whole gang….minus ME! (I really should learn to use that timer thing!) Just know that behind those beautiful smiles they were all muffling under their breaths, “take the dang picture, we’re starving!”
There’s always an obligatory nap after the Christmas feast so people scattered to different areas of the house to snooze and woke up in time to have our White Elephant gift exchange! We roll the dice and if you get a double, you can take a prize. This goes on for 30 minutes or so. What would a game be if it didn’t include stealing?? Yes, stealing is encouraged in this game! For some reason everyone wanted that red, doggie bag below- well, everyone except me because I knew what was in there!! The red bag had lots of miles on it as it traveled up and down the table to various people! Here is Sweet Pea with one of her “gifts”- a Sponge Bob alarm clock! We had more than a few chuckles over many of the gifts. If your curious, the red, doggie gift bag included some homemade peanut brittle that I had made earlier in the week that I obviously messed up. It was so bad and so sticky that I worried about the candy pulling out people’s dental work!!
One of my sons won this very interesting belt. Yee Haw!!
After all of the napping and then excitement, we moved onto desserts. Gma out did herself by making all of the candy, cookies, a pecan pie and pistachio cake. I took advantage of a local church who makes these delicious dutch apple pies- all I had to do was buy it and bake it! Happy, Happy!! So that’s how our holiday went- no exotic vacations or traveling for us. Just good old fashioned fun and fellowship!!
Hope you enjoyed the glimpse of our crazy Christmas! I’m liking our new tradition of eating Chinese food on Christmas Eve. Do you have any fun or crazy traditions??
I’m sharing this post with Grammie Time & The Diary of a Real Housewife!
Loved living your Christmas day again. Your photos are beautiful and hold so many memories. It was a wonderful day and we feel so blessed to be a part of such a wonderful, loving family. Thanks for the fun, the food and the laughter. It was all wonderful. Always beautiful when our family is together. Miss the other Grandparents though.
great post and love that your doing xmas again! so glad i came across your blog and hope youll stop by mine!
Sounds like your Christmas is as crazy as ours. Good food, family and presents! Even the dogs brighten the holiday spirit. Your cookie tray looks beautiful. Makes me want to begin baking now! Thanks for sharing your past Christmas post at Christms in July.