Christmas Eve

On Christmas Eve day we went to Rob's sister Tara's house for a nice dinner and games.  The whole clan was there except my nephew Jayson (on a mission in Canada) and brother-in-law Walt (had to work :( ). 

We ate yummy food...

opened a few presents..

Matthew loved opening presents this year.  Madi looks on with great interest.

Yeah for jammies!

Weston and his huge deka Backugan.

Sarah is so excited about her butterfly garden.  She wants me to order caterpillars online for her.  What?!  I've never heard of such a thing (though I'm sure they sell them somewhere).  I told her she'd have to wait for spring for us to find our own caterpillars.

Once Matthew realized that Uncle Clint really wasn't going to spank him, (as Clint had joked) he had a great time playing with him.  Boy, he doesn't get jokes very well; he still covers his bum when he sees Clint.

Sena and Camryn

It was so much fun having everyone together.  Rob's dad was there too, but didn't have a very good day, and went to bed early.

Pretty much every year, Rob and I make pictures for the families we have for Christmas.  Rob builds the frames, and I cut the mats.  This year we did Salt Lake Temples for Rob's parents and Tara nd Steve.  When the Draper Temple comes available, we'll swap it out for them, since that's where they were sealed earlier this year.  Steve's got a funny look going here.

Oh, we finished smaller Christ pictures for Brandon and Logan (we started them years ago- it's hard to get everything done!).

Rob thinks the frames are too plain, but I love them!  He does great work.

We also did a "The Family- A Proclamation to the World" for Rob's parents.  And... we finally finished the Sacred Grove picture for Terri.  We had her last year, but she was in the Phillipines for Christmas, so we were slackers and didn't get it done.

I think they turned out pretty well.  On my side of the family, we have Linda's family.  Since we didn't see them for Christmas... well, their's aren't done yet. Linda, I hope you like what I have planned.  I can't cut mats when the kids are awake, so I had a lot of really late nights.  My 2 and 3 a.m. nights caught up to me, and I was a bit wiped out for Christmas.  That's what I get for my procrastinational (is that even a word?!) tendencies.  Ah well, it's worth it.  You'd think we'd have a bunch of these pictures in our house.  We really only have a few- I'll have to work on that.

We invited my sister Terri and brother Dan to stay with us for Christmas.  They joined us at Tara's, then Terri came up to our house for Christmas Eve.  Dan decided to sleep in his own bed and come up the next day.  It was so fun having them with us!

We let the kids open one present at our house on Christmas Eve.  What do you know, it was pajamas.

Matthew was so excited for another pair of pjs.  He has yet to wear them though.  He's a ding-bat sometimes, and won't wear new clothes.  I think I have lamented about that on previous posts.

Rob even got pjs for Terri and Dan.  Why oh why didn't I get a picture of all of us in our jammies?!

Sarah was so excited to have her Daddy open this present she wrapped for him.  It was a few random little toys from the basement and Halloween candy.  How sweet!

I love the wrap job on these presents from Nathan and Sarah.  I especially love the use of blue painter's tape.  I eventually had to end the wrapping up of multiple packages with little toys and Halloween candy in them, or I would have run out of wrapping paper.  They were so cute about it though.  I did give them a lesson on gift wrapping.

We finished up the night with our traditional reading the Christmas Oranges story and eating a chocolate orange.  It was so late that we saved reading Luke 2 until Christmas morning before opening presents.  I love Christmas!