Christmas!

After making Santa's favorite peppermint chocolate cookies, we had some family time and read The Night Before Christmas.

Chess wanted to stay awake to see Santa, so we told her that Santa will not come unless they are asleep.  As she said her prayers that night, she asked that she would be able to fall asleep so that Santa could come.  Then, as Jared and I were watching TV, she came out of her room and told us we needed to go to sleep so Santa would come!  Sweet girl.

The next morning, we got up around 7:00 so we would have time to open presents before church.  It was a little bit rushed, but we all enjoyed it.


A chocolate sucker in the stocking brings a smile right from the start.


Going through all the goodies in the stockings.


Princess Belle - a favorite.


Melissa and Doug magnet dolls, Lera's favorite.


I think these kids would have been happy with just suckers.




Daddy is adjusting the bike seat correctly.


Chess got a balance bike from Santa.


Attempt 1


Attempt 2 (that's all the attempts I got)

Then we ate breakfast and got ready for church.


Here we are in our church clothes under our Christmas banner the girls and I painted.


Chess put together her new puzzle with a little help.

At lunch time, we headed to the church to eat with the family, and have our Christmas program.


Chess did a great job helping all the kids with the traditional Tommy Toad and other songs.  Lera mainly ran around and danced, but she still did a great job.




We let the girls eat their snowman cookie pops on the rainy way home.


As we pulled into our neighborhood, I caught Lera nodding off.  She had half her snowman head eaten, but did not get a nap that day.


Later, Mimi and Poppy came by to see what Santa brought.

What a busy and blessed day.  I hope you had a very merry Christmas, as well!