Merry Christmas!

Well, it's been just a couple of days (56 to be exact, but who's counting) since my last post, so I thought I would remind you of the new ground rules for the blog which I innovented back in November where I reserved the right to blog about any event or subject in any order I pleased. Today I would like to post about our Christmas (yep, the one in 2010) which I have yet to comment on, and which I probably should post about before I talk about our recent trips to Nauvoo, IL and Colorado, CO over the past 2 weeks.

We started off on Christmas Eve by singing some carols. My job was to intently try to play the right notes, while Ali corrected me as needed. Max's job was to give Michael a workout by sitting on his shoulders, while Michael's job was to point at the camera Megan was holding. Megan's dad's job was singing in perfect harmony with the others off camera--Kaitlyn, Ava and Megan's mom. All performed their jobs to perfection (as you can see below).


After we jollily finishing singing Christmas carols, we read the Christmas story to the kids from a beautifully illustrated book which my parents gave us when we were first married. After that, I started reading "The Grinch Stole Christmas" in my most entertaining voice to keep the kids' attention as they were already starting to get hyper. I didn't realize how long that story was and ended up quite exhausted and realized that my energy stores to perform such a reading were, in fact, "two sizes too small."

That night, Santa came and left us all kinds of presents under our tree. Max's Disney Cars bicycle, Kaitlyn's fashion hair salon station, and Alison's super automatic Nerf gun, were all too large to fit neatly underneath the tree, so Santa has his slaves elves assemble them as quickly as they could and leave them set out for the morning.


Before we could open presents in the morning, however, Alison and Kaitlyn had to show us what they had stayed up much of the night working on and which they had dreamed up: their own rendition of Santa and Rudolph. They took an old cardboard box and covered in green construction paper and cut out red letters spelling "Santa's Sleigh" and glued them on the side. Alison stuff pillows underneath her red sweatshirt and made a beard using Megan's white make-up removing pads. (I wondered why they asked where those were!) Kaitlyn was dressed in her brown long-sleeved shirt and skirt and they had made antlers out of brown paper and taped them on a headband; she had also taped a red fuzzy ball on her nose. Reigns were made from a medal from some award one of them had won. I died laughing! It was one of the cutest most original things I've ever seen--and they came up with it on their own.


After that we tore into present-opening mode. Kaitlyn was puzzled by the orange and red things she received in her stocking. We told her it was called "fruit" and it was nature's candy. I don't think she bought it. Actually, I don't think we told her that.


Max had a great time passing out and opening presents and then getting wrapped up playing with each one before wanting to open the next one.


Avery had a great time eating the paper her presents were wrapped in.


Megan and I also got presents which we opened and loved but have no photographic proof of.

In short, we had an amazing holiday...6 months ago. Merry Christmas!