Christmas!

 To start the Christmas celebrations, we first went to visit my Grandma Jo. She always makes the kids cute stuffed crocheted animals that they treasure.

We always do a special family Christmas Eve a day or two early so that we can have some family traditions of our own and then join our bigger families for the real day as well. So on the 23rd we had our first X-mas Eve (I'm sorry I kind of hate "x-mas" but I also don't want to keep typing out "Christmas" haha) Anyway, here's a cute photo of Johnny helping me prepare the fancy dinner. 

Cheese fondue with bread and apples, crab and shrimp with lemon butter, steak, salad, and strawberries. It was a good fancy feast! 

Girls had on matching sweaters!

And then it was time for Christmas pajamas.

And then Buck read the scripture story of Jesus's birth and we watched a movie clip. 

The next morning was Christmas! Well, for us, it was the 24th actually but whatever. ;) 

Rose

Hazel 

June

Johnny

Watching "White Christmas" together

And then it was off to church in our Christmas best

Then it was round two of X-mas festivities with Buck's family 

They did a fun thing and everyone had to bring a snack board that was themed off their favorite Christmas movie and then we all had to guess what they were. We had a few ideas for a few movies but ultimately decided to do "The Santa Claus." We did little sausages for weeny whistles, and cookies and hot chocolate. And with that we brought our DVD player and out a fake cookie in it so that it looked like the cookie dispenser on Santa's sleigh in the movie and we put hot cocoa mugs on top next to a snow globe. And all the food was on the game board of the old game "Mystery Date" and I'm not going to explain all of the reasons why, you just have to watch the movie or you already know. ;) 

We did some fun "reindeer games" and then did white elephant, always a favorite. 

The next morning I sat in a chair and didn't get up for a long time. I enjoyed watching Buck's family open their gifts, since we were already done with ours. 

Then just lots of hanging out and relaxing! I also went home to shower and enjoyed my quite time alone in the house, a rare thing. Merry Christmas to me! 

Nephew Finn and Christmas magic.