Christmas Time

Seriously, who doesn't love Christmas time?? It's by far the best Holiday of the year! I love Christmas because it's a great time to reflect and think about what I can do for others. What I can do to bring joy to their lives. I feel grateful for opportunities throughout the year when I can serve others and do nice, thoughtful things for them, but I do need to find ways to be even better all year through! One of my favorite Christmas songs is by Shedaisy and I love the line, "the secret of Christmas is not about the things we do at Christmas time, but the Christmas things we do all year through". I'm pretty sure that you can all guess at least one item that will be on my new years resolution list ;)

Well, I am not completely sure what it was about this years holiday, but I enjoyed every single minute of it. It was stress free, relaxing, magical as a parent seeing the kids anticipate Santa, and 100% fun!!

Christmas Eve has always been the day I look forward to the most. I love the traditions we have established with family and friends. We always start the day off bowling with friends. I believe this is our 6th year of doing so. After bowling we head over to Burgerville for lunch and wish Josie a Happy Birthday. The rest of the afternoon consisted of preparing homemade clam chowder, wrapping presents and making last minute runs to the store for various things.
Christmas Eve is always held at Spencer's parents house. Our dinner is homemade oyster stew & clam chowder, shrimp & cocktail sauce, bologna & cheese sandwiches and Marie's homemade cheese ball & stuffed mushrooms. This year I brought sourdough bread bowls for my clam chowder. It was so good. For dessert we all enjoy a glass of Reindeer Milk (Egg Nog, Vanilla Ice Cream & Apple Juice). Once things settled down we read the story of Christ's birth from the Bible and then played chimes. On our way home from his parent's house we have another tradition of stopping at Kelly & Aundrea's to play chimes with their family, as well as Jeremy & Rochelle's, and have yet another glass of Reindeer Milk with them. It's a fun tradition we started last year. Once we got home the kids opened up their Christmas Eve gift from Mom & Dad, a new pair of pajamas and slippers. The off to bed they went. Sadly, we got home so late Spencer forgot to do our traditional reading of "Twas the Night Before Christmas". I was sad about this.
After much wrapping and assembly, Santa & Mrs. Claus was finally able to go to bed. This was the first year in fact that Austin got up himself and peeked downstairs, instead of us having to wake him up. He must have been excited!

Well luckily for the boys, Santa came. Cameron was especially grateful for this because several days beforehand he had announced to us all that he had been put on Santa's Naughty List. Too much Dora the Explorer! The boys got an air hockey table & Wii games. Austin & Cameron were very excited to get their duck hunting game they asked for and Andrew got a new tri-cycle. Mom got new clothes and shoes (thank you Spencer!), and Dad got cologne, a DVD of a movie he was an extra in and tickets to tomorrow nights Winterhawk game. Nobody lacked anything!

After we opened gifts, I hosted a breakfast at my house for our family and made a fabulous recipe from the Pioneer Woman's cookbook. I am loving that cookbook! I also volunteered to work at the store from 10:00 a.m. till 2:00 p.m. and had a really fun time doing that. I expected the store to be dead, but I was wrong. Since no other store in the area was open we were hopping. It was fun though, my manager brought in homemade lasagna and garlic bread and we had a ton of fun.

Dinner was at Marie's house at 4:00 p.m. and as always she made a fabulous meal! Her coconut cake was to die for. I thoroughly enjoyed all the time we could spend together as a family! It was wonderful having Ryan home and able to join us. I can't say it enough ... Christmas is my favorite time of year!