Christmas 2009

I will warn you all now that this is a long post with lots of pictures. I have been a bit neglectful on posting to the blog, but I had a goal to have Christmas and New Year's pictures on before February 1st. Here I sit on January 31st posting Christmas. Hopefully, I'll get it and New Year's posted today or tomorrow.

Christmas was good and bad this year. I got sick right before Christmas with this major sinus cold. (Found out later that I had bronchitis. Not fun!) I was not feeling so great and was a little behind on getting things done. By Christmas eve though I decided I really should finish wrapping presents and baking cookies and goodies. So I dove right in. I went to the grocery store and even Wal-mart. (DO NOT GO TO WAL-MART ON CHRISTMAS EVE!) Anyway, I had just mixed up the Christmas cookie dough and put it in the fridge to chill and when I noticed the chicken nuggets in the oven for lunch were not cooking. So Jared came in to take a look. The bottom heating element was totally fried. So at 1pm Christmas eve we are frantically looking for a place to buy a new heating element. We found a place with a very nice man who is getting ready to close. Jared asks, "If I bring you a plate of my wife's homemade Christmas goodies will you stay open until I get there?" The man agrees. So we load up a plate and Jared comes back in half an hour with a new heating element. Yay! The Christmas cookies and ham are back on!

The rest of the night was good. We baked and decorated cookies. We had a nice ham dinner. We read the Christmas story from the Bible and then The Night Before Christmas. Then we have a tradition in our family to let everyone open one present on Christmas Eve. I try to mix up what that present is every year so that the kids don't always expect the same thing. It does usually revolve around a bedtime theme. (pjs, slippers, robes etc.) This year we got all of the kids big warm robes. They were sooo excited and they wear them all the time.



Christmas eve turned from good to not so good though when Jacob spent most of the night throwing up. He was not feeling good at all. To be truthful I wasn't feeling all that great either. So we put the put the kids to bed with a warning that we were NOT getting up until Jacob did. (Normally Jamie wakes us all up around 4am to open presents!) Anyway, we didn't get much sleep with Jacob being sick a good portion of the night. We got to sleep until 7am! I think it it is a tradition we should stick with.

Anyway, Christmas morning was fun. However, since I wasn't feeling so hot, I didn't take a ton of pictures. I was a bit out of it. Here are the few I did get.

Our tree before the ripping and tearing began.


The kids all got webkins from Santa.


The kids other Santa gifts.


I let Jared handle all of the putting stuff together. I went back to bed once the last gift was opened. It was really nice. You can't tell it from the pictures, but Jacob was not feeling good at all. At one point when Jared was trying to help Jacob put his new Bionicle together Jacob laid his head on the table and asked, "Do we have to do this right now?" He was exhausted.

We had planned on going to Jared's parent's house for Christmas dinner with all the extended family. However, since Jacob was sick and I really hadn't been feeling that great, Jacob and I stayed home. We napped on the couch and watched movies. Jared took the other kids over.

I sent the camera and Jared had Jamie and Jill take pictures. After dinner the grown-ups played games and the kids played with their cousins. It looks like a great time was had all around. We are just sorry that we missed it.