Christmas...a little late

You would think that I could get Christmas posted with all the snow days we've had, but I have discovered that I really enjoy sewing/quilting lately and the blog hits the back burner. But now, with yet another snow day, I thought I better get a little new reading material out there.
Christmas was great this year! It was a nice quiet stay-at-home year. The kids got a full two week break and we had big plans: children's museum, library, movies, Wallabies...stuff like that. Me being the lazy mom I am only got them to a movie (Tangled--loved it!!!) and the library. But we still had a nice holiday. We got the two trees set up and the house looked festive and cozy.
We decided to try a new tradition this year. We got a book a number of years ago that had a song, scripture, and story for each day of December. We would read the story and sing the songs each night and the kids really seemed to enjoy that. Tradition has always been, at least for my family, a big turkey dinner on Christmas eve. I cooked one and it actually turned out pretty good this time. The kids each got to open a new pair of matching PJ's Christmas eve, then we watched the Nativity and went off to bed.
As we were heading to bed, I was being tricky and laid out a new blu-ray player, pretending that Santa left it. Brian spotted it and told me I had sort of ruined his surprise-a new blu-ray player. He had made a scavenger hunt that started in my stocking and led to a hidden player somewhere in the house. We went ahead with it and I did my best to act surprised. The kids loved the players! We ended up keeping both (our dvd players have all pooped out since we moved here).
Christmas morning brought some nice gifts for the kids. They each awoke to a new portable DVD player, Santa brought Kemery a fun new slide, and Carter got a BB gun. (Brian took Carter to the basement to shoot at some targets. One BB ricocheted back at Brian and about hit him in the face. Carter jokes he almost shot daddy's eye out!) They each got a beautiful new dress or church outfit and lots of other fun stuff.
I got a nice new sweater, my new sewing machine, and a can of pepper spray (didn't know that came from the gun counter!). Brian ended up with some new pants, a new suit, and new work shoes. Christmas looses a little as you get older I have decided. It becomes a little more of the necessities and less of the glitz. But it was great! The whole day was nice to be able to just sit around and enjoy the time together! We plan to spend next Christmas bugging all our family! It's lonely without them!