Christmas!

This was the first year in many we've had Christmas athome. Living in Ohio and now Alaska, we have often spent Christmas away. It was a bit of a logistical nightmare trying to get everything to and from various destinations, and so we decided to stay put this year.

We spent Christmas Eve with some good friends. Our kids are great together which makes for a kind of pseudo-babysitter effect I'm sure all parents are familiar with. This was great as the adults got a little talking time. We finished the night early and got the kids to bed. The kids got pretty excited and it was the first night I can remember when they were the ones pushing to get themselves into bed (Chrismtas every day?). We read the birth story from Luke 2 and locked the house down for preparations.

Christmas was great. There is a clock in the kid's room and I don't know how we pulled it off, but we got the kids to wait until the clock said 8AM before going downstairs. I remember letting my parents sleep until 7 at the latest (I think one year was 6). 8 was great, but I'm not counitng on being able to pull that one off again. We ran downstairs, set up the videocamera and released the kids. We did the "take turns" thing with the kids to make the present opening a little longer followed by another reading of the Luke 2 account and breakfast.

Owen's list was dominated by Thomas the Tank Engine stuff and the girls got books and a bunch of craft things (weaving, painting, sewing, etc.) They also got some Lego stuff (dad is a big fan of Legos) and a karaoke machine (microphone and speakers).

I have two memories of most Christmas mornings. The first is the presents, but the second is eating crepes with apple filling that my mom would always make. My kids love crepes so I made them the same. They didn't last long (the butter and powdered sugar on top didn't hurt).

The rest of the day was spent talking to family and cleaning up. Carol had to wrestle with a couple of the packages to get the toys out. The marketers have come up with some great packaging for displaying the contents of boxes, but it can be somewhat daunting to release all the molded plastic from their twelve tie downs.

Overall the kids had a great time and so did mom and dad. We did miss family, but not the 12 suitcases we have to haul when we do the traveling Christmas. I think we may be here again next year. Merry Christmas!

More photos here.