Friday, January 2, 2009

CHRISTMAS EVE

I'm trying to catch up on my pictures so here's a big group of what we did on Christmas Eve. In the morning, we let the kids open their gifts from my Grandma Bethel. Amelia got this little doll in this blanket carrier that Grandma made. You can see how much she likes it! And she knows just how to hold a baby. :-) Such a great gift, Grandma.
She loves the baby!

The boys each got a little flashlight that was colored in camouflage. That was a thoughtful and appropriate gift. They love them. Kids really do love flashlights.

I just like this picture.

The boys with their flashlights.

The kids spent the morning playing with the flashlights. Yes, all morning. Around lunchtime we let them open their gifts from some aunts and uncles and that's what they did for the afternoon. My sister, Joy got them each a work/activity book that was appropriate for their grade level. They sat at the table and did pages in them and did some coloring all afternoon while Peter and I did various preparatory things for the Christmas dinner and for Christmas day.




Picture of a wiseman that Samuel colored.

Amelia joined in, of course.

Calvin got a book that had a magic marker that made the colors appear on the picture from Peter's brother and family and he spent a couple of hours just coloring away.

We had our Christmas dinner on Christmas Eve this year. We thought we'd try that so that we could just have leftovers on Christmas Day and not have to do any heavy cooking. It worked out very well.

We had turkey since we didn't cook one ourselves at Thanksgiving.

We all enjoyed the food a lot, mashed potatoes, gravy, stuffing, sweet potatoes and rolls.

Her meal is done and she's all ready to head to bed for a Christmas sleep.

This is pretty scary, but here we are after midnight when all of the stockings were filled, the gifts were wrapped and under the tree and the dinner was all cleaned up. I think we look tired.

Voila! Christmas 2008. So nice when all the preparations are done!



2 comments:

Jennie and Julie said...

I LOVE that photo of Millie looking out from under her bangs...she looks so cute. They are great pictures, and I think show a very peaceful Christmas Eve day at your house. Wonderful celebration!

Anonymous said...

Such a nice post. I felt right there with you. So peaceful and a great thought to fix the big dinner on the 24th and then have a day of just family fun.

I like the picture of Peter carving the turkey and one of the boys looking on learning from dad.

Have a wonderful day today.

Kathy