Christmas DeMoux: The recap

This past week has been a great one.  It is always fun to celebrate a holiday and doing fun things with fabulous people makes it even better.

Our week started with Aubrey's final musical theater performance of the season.  The group she is in is wonderful and every year I'm grateful that she gets to be a part of it.

This year, Aubs got to share the stage with her uncle Joel for a couple of songs (at this family performance they always invite group alumni to come onstage and perform a couple of pieces).  It was fun to watch Aubrey and fun to see my baby brother up there too.

We have a December born child and he gathered a few friends to indulge in a dollar theater movie to celebrate his advancing age.  They watched the new Ninja Turtles movie and Josh just loved it so much (that may have been said with a smidge of sarcasm).

We had a family party with my extended family and got to celebrate the season with more people we love.  My mom decided to include a talent show in this year's festivities so the kids got to show off their mad skills.

Santa also made an appearance at our party.  Even our oldest kidlets took a moment to sit on his knee (even though they are getting a bit big for knee sitting anymore).

Christmas Eve I finally got around to wrapping the presents that I bought before December even showed up (I am great at early Christmas shopping, I am horrible at early Christmas wrapping) so I spent a couple of hours locked in my bedroom with only a pair of scissors and a huge roll of paper for company (ok, Josh did come help some).

That night, after dinner, we dressed up for a family presentation of the nativity.  Then we read Luke 2 and spent some time talking about our Savior -- His life, His birth, His death, His example.  I was pretty proud of the kids for putting their excitement on hold for a bit so that we could remember why we really celebrate in the first place.

And then we tried something new.

Every year we give the kids new pajamas on Christmas Eve and most years they whine about how it is a lame present and can't they open something different for a change.

So this year I complied.  They got a Christmas Eve gift...it was socks and underwear.  

They were surprised!

But then they all complained that they didn't get pajamas so we headed out to our carport for a fun new piece of our celebration.  We took turns beating a piniata to a pulp (and that thing was pretty tough so it took some work).  

Inside was candy (of course) and also a pair of pajamas for everyone.  They were surprised again -- and please with pajamas this time.  Ha ha!  I guess I got the last laugh.

Christmas morning the kids came up to our room at 7:00 (there is a penalty of 5 minutes waiting for each minute before 7 they come into our room so they are pretty good about holding off until then).  After family prayer we headed out to see goodies from Santa and open presents from each other.  It was a really really great morning.

To add to the thrill, we also got our first measurable snow fall of the season so the kids got to break out the boots and spend some time enjoying the white stuff.  

All in all, it was a beautiful holdiay spend with they best people that I know.  We laughed (a lot) and teased and smiled and fought a bit and laughed some more (and we spent an inordinate amount of time cleaning up....ugh, all the cleaning up).  But over all we just enjoyed each other and enjoyed the wonder of the season as it spread over us.  It was a really great week.