A White Christmas

Christmas Eve - we attended a church service, but grandma was feeling ill and stayed home and scott & i had attempted a trip to Costco that afternoon and got lost (for at least the 4th time since we've been here!) on the way to the church, so grandpa attended the service with all 4 kids on his own! (scott & i got there about 15 minutes late and were unable to sit with them in the front row.) so grandpa braved it by himself - and the kids were so well behaved. we were proud.

yesterday, Christmas morning, we woke up to the excitement of the children. we checked our stockings - and to the boys' disappointment, nobody received coal. (they thought they could run trains with it.) we had a lovely breakfast and then got down to the business of opening gifts.

- at some point in the past couple days, jojo whispered to me, "we should call them gives, not gifts." each of the children was so excited about the money that uncle bobby gave them in texas, and the opportunity to use these funds to buy personal gifts for their family. so grandma and i took each of them shopping separately to make their purchases. -

so, Christmas morning, we planned to give gifts to the person whose name was on the "from" part of the label, so that they could hand their gift personally to the person they'd purchased it for. this turned out to be hilarious as the kids scrambled to get their gifts to give to others and stood by eagerly waiting for the other person to open the gift so they could see the reaction! it was a very fun time!

after a morning of enjoying our new gifts, we had a delicious Christmas lunch of ham, potatoes, sweet potatoes, green beans, rolls, lots of yummy foods. finally, there was another exciting gift - we saw snow flakes begin to fall outside! it was such a treat! we've had perfect weather for our whole trip (while at home, everywhere is flooded with rain). it's not been too cold here, but just for Christmas - there is snow. they went out and let it land in their hair and on their tongues yesterday.