Christmas

Merry Christmas! I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas and doesn't feel too down about the day already having come and gone. My birthday is New Years Eve, so it always seems a little easier for me to keep Christmas going because there is a whole other day of celebration just a week away!

Our Christmas this year was wonderful. It was just the four of us. I was really disappointed about it at first, but as the days led to Christmas Day I got more and more excited. I am so glad to have a wonderful husband who saw the excitement of it just being us and who gets just as excited about Christmas Eve as I do. We still haven't sparked any great Christmas Traditions like we want to, but there's always next year. It's mostly because James had to work until after 7 Christmas Eve, so when he got home he went straight to wrapping my presents and then we spent hours getting Ezra into bed.

Ezra has been really into Christmas this year, which has made it that much more fun. He enjoyed learning about Baby Jesus, though I don't think he quite understands that Christmas is His birthday and not a day of presents. I'm working on it :) He has visited Santa a handful of times, though he is still afraid to get close to him. The last visit we made he cried until I let him see him, ran to him, held his arms out to sit on his lap and then very quickly backed away in horror at what he was about to do. He stood about 5 feet from Santa and said, "I want pesents, cookies, candies and cars!" Then he walked a little closer, held his hands out and waited for Santa to give him his coloring book. Every time he would hear a noise outside our window he would gasp and say, "Santa! He's here! He's bing me pesents!"

Christmas Eve we set out cookies and milk for Santa and carrots for his reindeer. He was so excited about that. When he woke up he couldn't believe that Santa drank all the milk, ate most of the cookies and his reindeer ate the carrots. After Ezra went to bed James and I (and Santa of course) set out the presents and then we spent about an hour building his train track throughout the room. (He got a bunch of hand-me-down pieces from his cousin Tyler to fit the ones he got for his birthday, so it was huge!)

                                      
                               

James and I didn't sleep hardly at all that night. I never sleep well Christmas Eve. This year it was in part because we have a sick baby. (He was up way more than usual (his usual is every 1-2 hours). He has a really nasty cough for a 4 month old and he is so congested.) I set our alarm early so we would be up before Ezra to see his face when he saw everything. Well, we didn't need the alarm because we were just too excited.

When Ezra opened the door he just stopped, looked at the presents with wide eyes and then looked at the train tracks. The first thing out of his mouth was, "we're missing pieces." It was funny because the train track was huge; what was he expecting? We took it really slow this Christmas which was great.

We got a Kinect from my mother-in-law this year. James let Ezra open it and right when he saw it he said, "that for you daddy" and moved to the next present. Though now that he has seen how it works and has played his Kinectimals game, he loves it! We spent Christmas afternoon rearranging our living room to make the Kinect work. It was fun!

(Poor little Makai wasn't/still isn't feeling well :( )

When we were cleaning up the gifts we put some back into Ezra's stocking just to get them out of the way. When he noticed his stocking wasn't empty he ran to it and said, "Oh, der's more!" Just for a family history side note: presents inside the stockings are now called "stuffing stockers" because James just couldn't get it right all month long!

Later that evening we went up to the Stake Center next to the Temple where we enjoyed a wonderful Christmas dinner with our neighbors and friends. The only thing I actually made was sweet potatoes and guess what... I burned it. haha! It's not unusual for me to burn things. It was only the marshmallows and James claimed they were perfect, but I like them just barely brown, not slightly crispy. Oh well. Cristina provided most everything else and it was great! Thanks Cristina! We played games and ate lots of yummy dessert. Then we came home, played more games and went to bed.

It really was a great Christmas. We talked a lot about Baby Jesus and why we celebrate Christmas, but next year I want to do a Nativity Pageant with the boys and really focus more on Christ than Santa. We got a little more commercial this year than I would've liked. I am so grateful for our Savior's birth and this special time of year. Thank you to all our family and friends for the Christmas cards, gifts and warm wishes. We love you all!