Thursday December 25

Merry Christmas!!!!

The kids slept great all night.

Well......if you call waking up at 5 a.m. all night!!!

We couldn't convince them to just hang out for a couple hours in their room, so we got up.

It was a great morning.

I know I say this every year, and every year I wonder if it will be as good.

But Elsie Bug is the BEST at Christmas!

So much excitement!

So many screams!

Smiles and hugs.

Everything you think of on a perfect Christmas morning.

Makes me smile.

She just loves life :)

So they each got to come I the room one by one.

The big presents from 'Santa' are unwrapped and they get to see those right away.

Then they go to their stockings.

In the stocking is a gift and that tells them what kind of wrapping paper is theirs.

This was something my mom did when we were growing up.

It was always a fond memory for me.....plus you don't have to label them :)

Anyway, then the unwrapping commenced!

It didn't take very long.

I did make them slow down and let us see them open stuff.

I love the reactions :)

Anyway....then we just hung out.

Played with new toys, did some painting (Cass) and some calligraphy (Madi) putting together Legos and erector sets (Port) and being a Ballerina with her new Ballerina bar (Elsie).

Dad needed to go lay down after a while and get some sleep, Madi did too.

I picked up wrapping paper, but mostly just played with the kids, and tried to get some shut eye....which didn't happen.

Then I made some scones for a pre-dinner kind of thing.

We had a turkey cooking, but needed a little something to hold us over.

When the sleepy heads woke up, we had our turkey dinner.

It hit the spot for everyone.

I got a puzzle for the family for Christmas.

Last year the Young's got us a puzzle of our family picture for us, and we had a lot of fun putting it together.

I thought it would be fun to do another one for this year.

I don't know what made me do it....but I looked through all my pictures.

(That is one thing that I actually have organized in my life :)

Anyway......I found a family picture for almost every month this year.

A couple it was just of the kids and then a couple of them months had two family pictures in one.

And Mom and the kids for Mothers day and Dad and the kids for Fathers day.....and then their Birthday month pictures.

Anyway...it totally made me happy and I had to do a collage.

I think it turned out so fun!

So we put that together.

Everyone worked well together to get the job done.

Then we FINALLY got around to doing our Christmas gingerbread train.

We decided to do graham crackers instead of real gingerbread.

And we were going to have it just flat, instead of 3D like usual.

But Port thought of the idea of putting the Oreos on both side of the cracker so it would stand up.

Brilliant boy, I tell ya :)

So that's what we did.

It was a fun time.

Dad has been pretty good today.

He is getting better every day, so that is good news.

I think it is just at a slower pace then we imagined it would be.

We need to get ahold of someone to tell him what to do.

At the hospital we were told both to start PT right away, but then we were told to let it heal before we start.

But I am thinking he needs to get started in PT to get things moving, keep him motivated.

Anyway....

Keep your prayers coming.

We feel them and appreciate them.

We knew this was gonna be hard......but it is turning out to be harder than we thought :(

But I can say one thing, it's a good thing we have each other!

Anyway.....

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Oh....and it deserves to be mentioned.

After dinner and chores, Madi and Cassi went in Madi's room for close to an hour and sang songs and played the Ukulele together.

Made my mama heart happy.

A Christmas Miracle!