The absolute best part of being a parent is Christmas morning! I mean, really, does it get any better than that???? Here are the fab five waiting for the grandparents to get here so they can actually open the gifts...but they have smiles of relief because at least they know at this point, that they made the good list!
This year, we started a new tradition...the kids decided to write letters to Jesus and send them up in helium balloons that said "happy birthday" on Christmas morning. Here is a picture of the kids doing the usual dropping of "reindeer food" (i.e. glitter mixed with oats) on the front lawn in the hopes that it will attract the reindeer to the house!!! So- the big gifts this year were the Skylanders video game for the boys, barbies for the girls, and Drake got his own little tykes car--he has told mommy and daddy that he is going to Grammy's numerous times already.
The kids sang in the church choir on Christmas Eve...and Drew and Dawsyn both had solos. It was really nice and we were very proud of them. We also restarted a tradition that I stole from my childhood. When I was little, my mom's side of the family would choose "advent families" and all during advent--you would secretly take them gifts, then reveal who you had the week of Christmas. So, this year, we put the names of our friends in a hat and drew one. The winner (hopefully they agree with that) was the Byrd family. They have twins who are in Dawsyn's class at school. So, we very discreetly left them a gift or two every week from Thanksgiving until Christmas. We had so much fun ringing their doorbell and trying to run away before they saw us. It is difficult to be inconspicuous with 5 children! Needless to say, they figured out who was doing it before we revealed ourselves, but it was so much fun!
So--another Christmas is in the books! Literally--I already have the pictures in the photo albums! :)
