Christmas

Christmas Eve we invited two families and a woman from our ward over for a soup dinner and to watch the kids do the nativity. Zoey was an angel and loved wearing one of her dad's white T-shirts. Some of the kids weren't very excited about participating when the time came, but we did have a Mary, Joseph, Baby Jesus (Paige), one wise man, one Shepard and one angel.

Once the friends went home, we all opened our Christmas jammies (I made my PJ bottoms!) and Kevin read Zoey, "T'was the Night Before Christmas."
Christmas Morning:

We had just enough time before 9 am church to look through stockings, find the presents Santa left unwrapped for the girls, open new church clothes for each of us (thanks Grandma Redford) and have the traditional ebelskiver breakfast. Zoey was thrilled with her pink, Hello Kitty backpack. In fact, later that day she put it on and followed Kevin outside. There she informed him that she was going to campus and proceeded to walk in the direction of the bus. The backpack came in handy on the airplane the next day too.
Church was not the uplifting experience I was hoping it would be. We sang some congregational hymns, but there wasn't really anything special in the program. Zoey was not easy either. That was kind of a bummer.

We finished opening presents after church. I started packing for our big trip and then we hit to road for Irvine. 1st stop was the Robles' for tamale dinner. Then we convened at the Millers with the APCs to open presents. Sadly, I took almost no pictures of everyone there. I did however, realize we hadn't taken enough pictures Christmas day, so I managed to get a few of our family.

The best present ever this year was a healthy, happy new baby!

Notice the fine necklace and earrings I'm wearing. Not only did Kevin give them to me for Christmas, he also designed them!
Our little family on Christmas evening.

On our way out of town we stopped at the Rubins to wish all a Merry Christmas. Jackie's folks finally got to meet Paige. I love this picture. Who would have thought when Jackie and I met summer of 1990 that we'd have such cute kids one day????

Sadly, Christmas felt really chaotic and hurried. I did love everything that we did, it was just a lot in one day. We still had to finish packing when we got home and then left the next day at 5am for the airport. Worried that our tree, which did not hold up well this year, was an extreme fire hazard, we took it down Christmas night. Other decorations remained until we got back from Yakima.