Great presents, good food, and adorable children is what Christmas brought us this year!

I never thought staying inside for two days was going to be much fun. But thanks to the fact that I have awesome kids, a husband who helps, and Sarah and Jacob who entertain so well, we had a wonderful Christmas Eve and Christmas day.

Yesterday, while Elijah and I took a well deserved nap, Sarah, Jacob, and the children had fun reading, acting, and cooking. Sarah applied make-up on my kids and transformed them into little Christmas creatures, with Gillian being Cindy Lou Who, Jefferson transformed into an elf, and James playing Santa Clause. I'm so sad I didn't take a picture of James as Santa, but when I got around to taking pictures he was so done with Santa's beard.

After reading a few books, the children helped Sarah with Santa's cookies. Since Jefferson had promised to leave cookies and milk for Santa when he wrote Santa his letter, he was determined to make some delicious cookies. While Jacob was making a very yummy punch (with sherbet ice cream in it), the children made Peppermint Chocolate Crinkles with Sarah. After dinner, we all tried the goods, and were truly impressed, and confident that Santa would be pleased.

We then watched White Christmas, a favorite in our home. After the movie, we sang Christmas carols and read the story of Jesus' birth as found in Luke 2. The children were very excited for Christmas morning, so they went to their rooms with not much ado. Not, however, before they wrote a note to Santa and left him some cookies and milk:

We had told the children not to come downstairs till we called them. We woke up around 8:00am, called the children who were waiting patiently, woke up Charlton who was sleeping later than usual, and allowed them to dive into Santa's presents.

After examining his gifts, Jefferson went to see if Santa had eaten his cookies, and to his pleasure, he had. Santa had even left a special note for all of them.
After that, we were all ready to open the presents our family had sent us. The children were very pleased with our present to them. They played with them for the rest of the day. Gillian got a Christmas Barbie, James a rocket, and Jefferson was happy to receive a helicopter.
We had a good Christmas dinner, played a few board games, talked, watched Holiday Inn, and enjoyed each other's company. Our Christmas was beautiful and calm. I hope your Christmas was just like you liked it.

Merry Christmas!