Merry Christmas

We are still working on creating some good Christmas traditions in our house. I know they are so important, yet it is taking me a long time to figure it out....oh well. I love this picture. We had another good year of kids sleeping until past 7am, and not going downstairs until about 7:30. I wonder how long that will last. They had to come down the stairs with their eyes closed and go around the other way to the kitchen so they wouldn't see the presents...We have picked up Travis' family tradition of eating Captain Crunch on Christmas morning, and eating before we go into the living room to see if Santa came. It's the only time of the year they get sugar cereal, really, so I thought why not?

Then we go into the living room and find where our stocking is sitting with our Santa gift and we all open the gifts and look through our stockings at the same time, and then open the gifts under the tree one at a time, taking turns, youngest to oldest (except that I open before Travis does, so that I won't feel like the oldest? He humors me...)

Noah got a very cool gift from Santa this year. Everyone seems to be enjoying it and he has to ask to use it. It's a little handheld microscope ("Eyeclops"), that you plug into the TV and it magnifies things 200 times. We have had fun looking at everything we can things of--salt, spices, clothes, carpet, skin, fingernails, colors on paper, fruit, hair (it's hilarious to look at all of our hair and then look at Travis' hair. I always said his hair is like a Brillo pad. Under the microscope, his looks like fat steel bars, esp compared to the rest of us).

Kaden was excited to get a bow and arrow. Maybe Santa knew that we eat very sugary cereal on Christmas morning because he filled the stocking with cool things like kiwis, mangoes, and clementines--and of course toothbrushes.

Ammon got his own roll of tape in his stocking. Funny boy. We go through a lot of tape and paper in this house lately. And here he got his first electric toothbrush, and threw a tantrum that night because he didn't want to use it. I thought he would love it, because it is Diego, but it turns out he was quite offended that Dora was on there with Diego and she is a "guwwull" (nevermind that he loves Dora, too, and even picked out Dora as the book to read last night...)

And Micah had the time of his life, as always, and is always more interested in sitting on presents than opening them, just like he would rather step on books and toys than play with and read them at times.

On Christmas Eve, we gathered around the tree with the lights on, and opened our scriptures to read the story of the birth of our Savior. We talked about the gifts under the tree and why we give gifts and what the greatest gift of Christmas is--That God loves enough that He gave us His son, to set the example and to save us all. We watched a little nativity video and sang Christmas songs in front of the tree and then chose one present to open. I love Christmas time. And I do love and enjoy Christmas day, and get excited for it. But honestly, ever since I was little, I loved to savor every day that I could before Christmas came, and wish that it could all last longer. I start to feel a little sad as the day grows nearer and I know it's almost over. We had a good day, but I have to say my favorite part of Christmas is all of the magic and goodness of people shown as we remember the Savior during the season and rejoice together and celebrate together.