Christmas Eve

On Christmas eve-eve we spent the evening driving around looking at lights.  This is one of my favorite holiday traditions started by my aunt Pat.  This was my favorite house.  

On Christmas eve day we made sugar cookies and frosted them later that night.




The boys played a 4 hour game of monopoly.  On the tv: that is baby Brock!  I decided for winter break I wanted to watch ALL of our home movies in order.  It was so fun!  We just kind of had them playing in the back ground.  I had several epiphanies while watching that I might share later.

We made our usual sea food dinner.  This year we had 2 kinds of shrimp and lobster tails.

As all of you know we have had a rough year and a half of unemployment.  We have been blessed over the last year and a half from our savings and food storage that we have always felt "fine" - but that was quickly running out.  As mentioned in a previous post Jason got a contract job at the beginning of November - but we had a lot of upcoming expenses and catching up to do and replacing broken things.  Because of all of this we had told our children Christmas would be small this year, they responded, "like last year?" - oh yea - we did this last year too, "um... smaller than last year" we responded.  Santa could bring them all one small present.  That would be it.  No stockings, no presents from cousins (we didn't go in on the drawing) and grandma Hanna was giving them activities for their present (which they all wanted and chose (those are the activities all listed in the previous post)).  They were gracious and fine and didn't seem too upset at the thought of having 4 presents under the tree.  Throughout the month of December the kids decided to make each other presents.  This wasn't brought on by Jason or me.  I think Megan started it and they all just followed suit.  They were very thoughtful and they took a lot of time and effort into making these presents.  Brock doesn't like making things - so he did jobs and earned money to buy a few things.  Each present was really very thoughtful about that persons personality.  It was very sweet.

Then on Christmas eve we got a knock at the door.  It was a few families form our ward all holding a bunch of presents and singing carols.  Several families had gotten together to buy our family Christmas!  It was overwhelming.  The kids didn't know what to say.  After putting all the presents under the tree this is how it looked.

 My brothers and sisters also sent presents for each of the kids.   The kids were so grateful and humble about the whole thing.  They kept saying things like, "Why us?" or "Our ward loves us" and "and you said it was going to be a small Christmas?!"  We truly had a Christmas miracle and the kids went to bed Christmas Eve night excited to see what the "real Santa" in their lives brought them.  This is the true meaning or Christmas - sacrifice, love, service, giving, selflessness and I am grateful my kids got to see this in action.

Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night!