k-strat

I think my favorite part about Christmas is that we get to see tons of family, the kids are off school, and there's almost no reason to get dressed for two weeks. Christmas this year was so lovely! It started a couple days early when Antelope and Uncle Benny, Bonnie, and Riser came over after church for our annual gingerbread house decorating.

Overall it was successful, as I'm sure you can see, but it was not without quite a bit of arguing and drama. Lauren and I brainstormed ways to make it smoother in the future since all the kids are starting to get quite opinionated (meaning my kids, and Lauren's just want to participate!) so next year we may have each kid do their own side, or make a few smaller houses and pair the kids up so there are less "cooks in the kitchen" per house.

After that we exchanged a few gifts!

Ben spent a good chunk of that day decorating the living room for us. He made tons of snowflakes and then designed an F-15 cockpit on the door and turned the room into a jet.

We enjoyed hot chocolate...

And then we got ready for something new we tried this year - a Christmas Eve open house! I took almost zero pictures, but here was the door the kids decorated, starting to get food ready, and a couple pictures.

From there we headed straight to church.

We love the candlelight service at church.

When we got home we ate a more casual dinner after having people over for the day and then played a new game from Uncle Benny and Antelope.

Then we got ready for bed. The kids briefly put on their Christmas jammies from years ago and wanted to show us how small they had gotten.

Each of the kids got to open a gift:

We did our annual pyramid picture:

We read some books and put out cookies for Santa:

Christmas morning, the kids ran into our room at 7am in what Chris called a "coordinated Blitzkrieg" and then they ran back out. We were a little confused but found Rosie and Ben reading quietly on their floor waiting for us.

We took a stairs picture:

And then went downstairs to see if Santa came!

We started with a couple unwrapped gifts from Ben and Rosie: room signs!

And then moved on to stockings:

At some point we ate breakfast while opening gifts!

Ben opened his first gift - color changing hot wheels, and we lost him to the bathroom sink for a half hour.

The kids opened their new nativity piece and Ben immediately grabbed his shepherd and layed him down because "the shepherds were afraid when the angel came"