Christmas!

OK, so hopefully this post will wrap up the Christmas posts and get me back on track. 

Christmas Eve, Rachel M. and I hosted, what has morphed from our families’ Christmas Eve celebration into a Christmas Eve open house of sorts.  I love love love to bake between Thanksgiving and Christmas, so I bake up a storm and Rachel typically contributes the savory finger foods (and some sweets too).  We invite anyone who doesn’t have anything to do on Christmas Eve.  We always think not many people will come, but it ends up being 6 or 7 families and just the right number.

Of course, we work around the awesome Christmas Eve service at the church. 

I’ll tell ya, the service is one I look forward to every year.  It’s not long and it’s all family, so I wasn’t sure how Kylie would do.  But as expected (since we went to the 2:00 service), she fell asleep and slept right through the best part…

It’s an awesome quiet time right before the mass chaos of Christmas.

Christmas Eve, we let Jenna open up one gift and traditionally, it’s always pajamas…usually Christmas themed.  This year, there was a little twist and it was a big hit!

Footies!  And to top off the excitement of the day, right before we left for service, Jenna comes in with this…

Good thing the tooth fairy and Santa know each other! 

Christmas morning, Jenna managed to sleep until about 7:30 or 7:45.  I woke up before her, of course, and got presentable.  When everyone was up, we traipsed downstairs.

This little scooter thing was Jenna’s gift to Kylie.  She saw it somewhere (on tv, online?) and paid for it herself.  It is like a 360 ride on toy and so it’s very easy to maneuver and Kylie LOVES it.

I love this but still haven’t found time to put photos in it.  In time though…in time.

Jenna took money and bought both of us stuff and she is getting really good at picking out thoughtful gifts.  For instance, because Steve volunteers at the gun range, she picked him out a Wii paintball game.  But the biggest “Official Red Ryder Carbine-Action Two-Hundred-Shot Range Model Air Rifle” gift this year was for Jenna.

So Jenna reads the riddle (there were numbers underneath but for privacy, I cropped them out) and she’s trying to figure out what it means when the box starts vibrating.

Now before I catch heck about giving my 11 1/2 year old a cell phone, an iPhone no less, let me explain…this is my old iPhone 4 (part of our early Christmas to each other was that Steve and I upgraded to 5s) and because of our shared minutes plan, it only cost me $10 more to put Jenna on the plan AND I am under no contract and dropped our $30/month mifi, so still saved $20.  Anyway, we wanted to see how responsible she would be while we have little to lose and lots of control.  In this day of instant contact, I like being able to reach Jenna when she’s at a friend’s house or across the street/outside playing.  Anyway, it has been a good thing for us (the best way to get her to listen is threaten to take away the phone!) and the phone did come with a list of rules that she had to agree to before accepting the phone.

Anddddd…that’s her reading them.    But all in all, she’s been good with it and I loved her excitement.

Later in the afternoon, we went for the Taylor family Christmas and how wonderful it was!

My niece Alex and her family weren’t able to make it in town but this is the rest of the crew.  I love these folks.

After that, we went home and exchanged with the big kids which I always enjoyable.

This is Steve with his gift from Chase.  I can assure you, he didn’t smile like this for ANY gift I got him  Humph.

We bought Gage a Wii which was his big surprise.  He didn’t really get too excited over it here, but Micah says they play it all the time so I know he is glad to have it.

It was a good Christmas.  Not too chaotic…I wished the weather had been colder.  I’m a fan of white Christmases, but that definitely wasn’t in the cards this year.  Maybe next…

And that concludes the Taylor Family Christmas of 2012.  Thanks for hanging in there with me!