Christmas Day!

This is the first year in a while that we have spent Christmas at home and the kids were able to wake up and open their gifts Christmas morning (instead of 2-3 days early).... the kids were starting to suspect that Santa never gave them any gifts because we weren't around here on Christmas and in Arizona all they got was gifts from Grandma and cousins (where was Santa's??)
Anyways it was a fun Christmas. Luckily the kids have inherited my night owl genes (well, it is not so lucky when I am trying to put them to bed) - but I don't have any 5:30am Christmas riser. We all sleep in and roll out of bed 8 am all rested. Then the kids excitedly ran down the stairs to open their gifts.

The kids opening their gifts Christmas Morning!!

Melanie & Emma's new Barbie Doll House!

Courtney's new set of Books (she loves to read, read, read!!)

Dayton's new horse

Later on in afternoon we made a Gingerbread house (we were going to do sugar cookies too but ran out of time since I was packing and cleaning and doing laundry and trying to get everything ready for the trip the next day)

Gingerbread houses

A work in progress

The kids decorated the house themselves -

...and of course, tasted some of the goodies :)

The finished product!! Doesn't it look great!!

Well, I'm always "trying" to be crafty. This year, for Christmas I thought I'd make everyone Christmas Pillow Cases! Each year we exchange gifts in my family with a different sibling, this year I had Teresa's family so I thought I would make them pillow cases too. It seems like a really easy task - for some crazy reason I thought I could whip them all out in a couple of hours (well it ended up taking me about an hour for each one - so about 12 hours total). So it took a bit longer than I thought, but my kids loved them. So I decided that I am going to make different pillow cases for the different holidays (I already bought the heart material :) for Valentine's Day).. Here are some pics of the Christmas ones I made for my kids:

...and here is the one I made for the adults (Don, me, & Teresa & Aaron) - maybe it seems like a kid thing to have Christmas pillow cases, but oh well, I enjoy getting into the Christmas spirit too.

And here is the picture of the the tie quilt (folded up) that I finally completed for Don for Christmas this year (don't ask me when I started it.) We turn the heat down at night so an extra blanket on the bed always keeps us warm... the other one we had - was falling apart so it was about time I replaced it.

Since no one was able to come up (due to all of the snow & it kept coming down that day - we got about another foot or so on Christmas day) and because we live so far from my family, here some pics of our "Christmas House"

We had a wonderful day. We hope everyone had a Very Merry Christmas!! We are grateful to our Savior for His life, example, and sacrifice for us; and are very thankful for this time of year that we can celebrate His birth and reflect on the real reason/purpose of our lives. May the Love of the Savior fill your hearts and homes, and May the Lord continue to bless you all.