Christmas!

I love Christmas! I love being with family. I love the crazy chaos that is Christmas Eve. I love Christmas morning with the kids. I love the look on their faces when the see all the surprises that await them. I love all the good food and treats and candies. I love Christmas!

We hosted the Court Christmas Eve festivities in our humble little house. We had a total of 29 people in our house for a good old KFC dinner. I am told that KFC was a tradition at Grandma Reese's house for Christmas Eve dinner. Since we were hosting Christmas Eve at our place in Milk River(where Grandma lived), Daniel wanted to bring back the KFC. It was so good. We had so much food. We had to borrow tables and chairs from the church so that we would have seating for everyone. We just barely fit. It was great.

After dinner, we had the kids make gingerbread houses. They had so much fun. We had icing and candy everywhere. After that we had the kids gather for the cousin's gift exchange and then sent them down stairs to play while the adults exchanged white elephant gifts, which on the whole was rather uneventful. After that was all cleaned up, Grandma Kaye had the traditional PJ's to hand out to everyone, young and old alike. I love PJ's from Kaye, they are always so wonderful.

To finish the evening off, Kathryn had prepared a puppet show for everyone. A friend of ours send us some nativity hand puppets(a big shout out to Krista! You rock!). Kathryn wrote the script, and narrated while some of the other cousins manned the puppets. It was totally spur of the moment and really quite cute and somewhat chaotic.(sorry no pics)
Once all was said and done, it was late, and kids were tired. Slowly people started heading out and we were left with actually a fairly small mess to clean up (a big thanks to my favorite new dishwasher). And then began the fun of getting things ready and set up for Christmas. I was so organized this year and didn't have any last minute projects to do (except stitching a face on the stuffed cat I made Kymberly). I was in bed by 1am, but had trouble going to sleep because I was so excited for Christmas morning.
Surprisingly the girls didn't get up until a little after 8am (which Daddy really loved, he could have slept longer). Christmas morning was all I expected it to be. The girls were thrilled with all of their gifts. Kymberly was adorable, and took her time tearing the paper off the presents with a big "ooh, ahh" with each little rip. And then she would be completely enthralled with that toy until someone handed her another wrapped gift to slowly open. I think that she enjoyed the tearing off the paper as much as she did playing with the toys.

We spent the day at home, just relaxing and playing with all the fun stuff that we got. The girls even let me have a nap for a while. It wasn't too cold today so we played for awhile in the yard with the new sled from Grandma and Grandpa Forsyth while Kymberly was napping. And of course for supper we had left over KFC.
What a great two days!