Christmas 2015!

Yay!  Christmas! We enjoyed a really great Christmas holiday this year.  It was a quiet, peaceful, slow day at home.  My favorite kind of day!  With the added bonus of the excitement and fun of Christmas, this was a near-perfect day.  Ha!  We woke up early (but not too early), wore cozy clothes, ate yummy snacks and food, played with games and music and toys, and watched movies together (one of them, we watched twice!).  Perfect!  The pictures below show some of the great memories, beginning with Christmas Eve.

Okay, so, I love food.  Which is why I consider the big Christmas Eve meal the REAL beginning of Christmas!  We start working on the food the day before, so that on Christmas Day we have little to no food prep to do (so I can relax!).  This year's meal was oh my goodness delicious!  Spiral sliced ham with a brown sugar glaze, garlic-rosemary roasted potatoes, kale and butternut squash, famous rolls, and sparkling cider.  So good!  And pretty, too!

Dinner got the A-OK and thumbs up from all the guys, and Coco was too busy eating to express her feelings about it.  Ha!

This year I made a chocolate pie instead of the key lime pie we have had in the past.  Adding whipped cream and Christmas sprinkles made it the perfect Christmas Eve treat! 

This cute guy seemed to like it! :)

Treats for Santa!  This year we left out candy cookies and peppermint fudge with a cold glass of milk for The Big Guy.  Lucky Santa!

Part of the fun of Christmas Eve was having Daddy home early.  It's a blast to play games with him on the tablet!

Next on the agenda for Christmas Eve was a performance of the Nativity by the children.  Courtney directed the production.  They worked on it for hours!  Here we see an angel coming to tell the shepherds about the birth of the baby Jesus.

Shepherds waiting in the wings for their turn to perform!

Mary and Joseph with the Baby Jesus.

The shepherds have arrived to worship the baby!

Mary and Joseph singing Silent Night (accompanied by Chase).

They did a great job in their performance!  After this we had a little FaceTime with Nana, since we can't be there with her in person for the holiday.  The kids all performed Christmas songs on the piano for her and tried to contain their excitement to get to bed so Santa would come!  It was a nice evening!  And the good news for Mom and Dad was that since our BIG Christmas present to the kids had come in October (the piano), we didn't have to stay up late wrapping this year.  Brilliant!  And the even better news was that Santa DID come at last!

Christmas morning!  Trey and Courtney and Daddy are super excited waiting for the boys to come upstairs to see what Santa brought!

Here the crew is waiting for the signal to dig into their stockings.  Avery is pretending to be perfectly calm and not at all excited.  Daddy is NOT pretending to be asleep.

"Look at what I got!"

Trey got a new movie in his stocking.  Just look at his face...ha!

Each one got a new movie in his/her stocking.  Trey got a cool dinosaur movie, and Courtney got the Pixar movie "Inside Out."  None of us had seen it before that day, but we loved it so much, we watched it twice! 

Stockings are so fun!

The big boys were exploring their stockings at the top of the stairs.

Coco got a new pair of owl earrings, which she loves!  She said, "It's my favorite kind of bird!"

Sour gummy worms in the stockings are the best!

Trey set out all of his stocking goodies for us to see: Thomas bandaids, cookies, toothpaste, movie, toothbrush, gum, gummy worms, lip balm, and a bucket of cereal.  So much fun stuff!

Chase and Avery loved their stockings, too!

Chase's new movie was a documentary of the original writing and performances of Handel's Messiah.  Avery's movie was a DVD of the live performance by the Piano Guys at Red Rocks (the concert that Chase and I attended).

Here, Courtney is reading Santa's "thank you" note that he always leaves behind after eating the goodies they left for him.

Trey was SO excited when he opened his gift from Santa to find that it was exactly what he wanted--a toy fire truck.  It was even better when he discovered that it was a remote control (with a blaring siren, of course!).

Courtney's gift from Santa was her very first real American Girl doll--Samantha Parkington.  She loves it!

Chase and Avery opened their present from Santa together--a simple recording system and software for recording their music.  This could be the start of some interesting new ideas for them!

Christmas morning (homemade) cinnamon rolls!  This is one of our favorite traditions on Christmas morning.  After we see what Santa brought, we take a break for cinnamon rolls and then go back to open the rest of the gifts under the tree.  Trey is raising his hand because he wants to say the blessing on the food, as usual!

Here's Mom, sitting in the middle of the Christmas explosion!  It looks like I am admiring Daddy's new drill, but really I'm probably trying to move it out of the way so that I can pick up trash and keep things tidy.  Of course!

Dad and Chase started setting up the new software for recording music.

Trey's gift from his siblings was this cool building set for dropping marbles.  Avery was helping him put together one configuration here, but this toy kept the kids busy for much of the day!

Working on recording music.

From Nana, Coco got this great gift of a real cake pop maker.  She wanted to make cake pops right away, before she even got dressed!

Pulling out her first batch of vanilla cake pops!

Cake pops covered in chocolate glaze and Christmas sprinkles (because we didn't have enough treats in the house already) were a yummy treat on Christmas Day!

And the second batch was covered in powdered sugar.  She's a pro already!

And that concludes the set of pictures that I took on Christmas Day!  As I mentioned, it was a really great day.  I'm always thankful for the time we share together on Christmas.  I love how all the anticipation and anxiety leading up to Christmas morning finally comes to an end with happy smiles and playing happily and peacefully together all day long.  Happy family time is definitely one of the "wonders of His love."  Thanks, family!  You're the best!