Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas!!!

Today and yesterday we did nothing but family time, cooking, playing, and reading stories. The boys decorated some cookies for Santa, we had cheese fondue for dinner - the boys LOVED that.

After dinner we read "The Polar Express" to the boys. At the end, we presented to the boys the first gift of Christmas from the story, a bell. We then went on to ask them what the real first gift of Christmas was...of course the Christ child.
We performed the Nativity. I was Mary (2nd time my entire life I got to play that role, Lyndee always got it while growing up), Roger was Joseph, Mikey was an angel, William was a "ylepper" (sheperd), Todd was a wise man, and Grant was a terrorist. I have been reading Christmas stories to the boys since Thanksgiving, and we have a book with some illustrations that quotes the story of Christ's birth from Luke and Mathew. I have been reading that almost everyday so that the boys could know and understand the story of Christ's birth, so when we performed the Nativity, the boys really knew their roles. Then as we were ending the boys were distressed because they wanted the scene with Herod in it, so they insisted that Todd be Herod, Roger took me and "baby Jesus" into Egypt, William gave "Baby Jesus" a sword to fight King Herod ...and Satan, then Mikey, Roger, and William fought "Herod". I now wish I would have video recorded it.
We finished with reading some stories and putting out some cookies and milk for Santa, and some carrots for the reindeer. Then we went to bed.
This morning was really nice. We all went downstairs together, Mikey was so anxious to go down. The boys were so excited to see their toys, they had asked for believe it or not, Dinosaurs. They played with the toys Santa had left them and emptied their stockings. Grant got a "little red car", he noticed it immediately and sat in it, waving to me all the while.
After awhile we had them exchange their presents with one another. Almost a month ago there was a "Secret Santa" shop at a local church. We took the boys there and let them go and get everyone in the family one thing. They loved doing this and I had no clue as to what they had gotten. As they were giving eachother their gifts William was so confused as to why he had to give other people the gifts. So when he gave Todd a transformer, Todd let him have it back.
After they were playing with all that for awhile I made some breakfast. Todd's family usually has Bagels and Locs for breakfast, so in keeping with tradition but compromising because I don't really LOVE this meal, we are creating our own tradition of having Eggs Benedict with Locs instead of ham.
After breakfast we went back to the living room and had each of the boys grab one of the presents for them. After opening, they played with each present for awhile, then when they were ready for the next, we had them open another one. This really prolonged the opening time to several hours, but that was better because they got to have a little time to play with each gift, and we got to cherish the time for a little bit longer. The boys reaction to each gift was awesome. True, there were some that they were more excited about than others, but every gift was a pleasant surprise, the reactions were priceless, I can totally see why giving gifts to little kids is a lot more fun than giving gifts to adults or teenagers.
My mom had gotten the boys light-sabers. they LOVED these. They immediately starting fighting with them. Mikey and Roger were actually playing pretty rough with them and did show some good skills, William gets the cutest fierce face on when he goes into attack, and Grant is surprisingly very good and aggressive.
When we were younger my mom never bought any "good" cereal... they just were too expensive. Because of this, every year for Christmas we each got our own box of "good" sugary cereal. I remember how much I loved getting this, so the boys each got a box of cereal. They were just as excited to unwrap those boxes as they were any other toys. So of course, they requested that we have cereal for lunch. It was a happy chorus that went on around the table as they ate their sugary cereal. All of them happily humming while shoveling their sweet cereal into their mouths with milk dripping off their chins.
For dinner we had the traditional turkey dinner. The boys weren't really into the dinner, and Roger actually threw up during dinner (he was having a coughing fit), but he did make it to the bathroom!
All-in-all, a really great Christmas. Hope yours was great too!