Some Christmas pictures - we've started a tradition to have a fancy family dinner on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day. This year we had the missionaries and some friends from our ward over. The special part about this dinner is there is no kids table. Our girls love that they get to sit at the fancy table with the grown ups. Last year it was just our family and we all dressed up in church clothes. That was really fun too. We'll see how this traditions plays out over the next few years.
Christmas pajamas!
Dallin did NOT want to put his on... I don't know why. I think it was because he didn't want to take his shoes off, which he loves to wear. In the morning when he wakes up, he wants his shoes on first thing. I'm the same way, I don't like to be bare footed.
The train table was the big present this year from Santa. It was mostly for Dallin, but I've been pleasantly surprised how much the girls love it, mostly Carmen.
All the gift placed under the tree from Santa and the elves.
Dallin was so excited when he saw the train table. But as soon as he opened his stocking and found a tiny Lightning McQueen match box car, the trains were left behind. It seemed that we could have just spent the $3 on the match box car and he would have been happy, instead of all the money on the train table. But now nearly a week after Christmas, he loves that table and plays with it all day.
The girls all asked for horse barns, stables, gates and horse trailer - so that's what they each got in some for or another.
The most memorable story of the day was later that afternoon as we were getting ready to go to Oma and Poppy's house: That morning after opening presents, I asked Aliza about a present I never saw her open. It was a DVD that she said she never opened. I just assumed that it had been lost in all the wrapping paper and we'd find it after we cleaned up some more. I didn't think of it again until we were getting ready to leave, I remembered another present I never saw Carmen open. And I remembered another and another.... soon the light bulb went off and I realized that I never put out some presents. And they were mostly all Carmens!!!! She must have only opened one or two presents that morning because she had a large pile of more presents to open. She said, "I thought I had just been really bad so I didn't get many presents". I felt terrible!!!! The poor thing never said anything about it all morning. The real kicker was the one present for the entire family that was addressed FROM SANTA. Aliza quickly caught on and wondered why Santa would have left a present in the closet... (face palm!)
