Merry Christmas!

A few days before Christmas, the boys put together the Gingerbread House.  Pretty good, eh, for being a year old package. : D

This year for Christmas it was just our little family.  We were excited to start new traditions and to bring some from our families growing up.  One of those traditions that we kept was the Christmas pizza.  

Here are Glenn and Paul preparing it...

Yum!

That night Paul and I got to bed around 10pm.  We joked that we just set the record for the earliest time parents have gone to bed on Christmas Eve! : D

And the next morning Glenn didn't get up until 8am or so.  So we were not tired that morning.  We were up before him and were waiting for him to come out and see it all decorated.

Here is what it looked like after Santa came to visit.

Glenn came out--pretty sleepy still. But that was okay, because he was pretty calm. 

 We also kept the tradition from Paul's family to read the Christmas story from the scriptures and sing all of the Christmas Church hymns.  Grandpa Dennis put together this program when he was in the Bishopric a number of years ago.  I enjoy singing each song--that's my favorite part.  We added to the tradition so Glenn could be more involved, by having him bring the characters from his Little People Nativity set when we read about them.  He liked doing that and he paid attention pretty well.

By the end, he had noticed the gifts on the couch and was anxious to see what they were.  So off we were to open the presents.  We had a fun pace with that.  We didn't rush to open them all at once, but we opened one and enjoyed it and then opened another and so on.  It was a great morning!

It was a very "Jake" Christmas.  Glenn got lots of fun Jake items from the Disney show "Jake and the Neverland Pirates".  He was so excited to get them and to be Jake!

After presents, we had breakfast.  I had found some cute ideas on Pinterest--my first time looking and using the site.  So we made snowmen and candy canes.

It was good--we all love donuts and strawberries and bananas--so it was delicious and simple!

Later that afternoon we went to an early Christmas dinner with several other families in our ward.  We enjoyed turkey and ham and potatoes and rolls and all kinds of yummy food!  And of course we had lots of pie choices too.  

Glenn had fun playing the Wii with Cameron that evening too.  It was nice to spend that time with friends when we didn't have family close by to be with.

Merry Christmas!!

(Glenn got this cute picture from Grandma Esther.  Each day he got to put on a different sticker and ended with the baby Jesus on Christmas Day.  Every day he would ask, "What number day is it?"  So he could put on the next sticker.  He also enjoyed having the chocolate advent calendar from Grandpa Dennis.)

Thank you everyone for your gifts!!