Christmas Eve

As part of our Christmas Eve tradition, we opened the gifts from our family gift exchange.

Jason received the dice game FARKLE made by Abree.

Rylee received a purple yarn-wrapped scarf hanger made by Treyson.

Abree received a cute handmade ceramic ocarina bear made by Taylee.

An ocarina is a small wind instrument with a mouthpiece and holes for the fingers.

I received a decorated/repurposed mail sorter from Rylee.

Treyson received a fleet of robot snacks (drink box, applesauce, Laffy Taffy, raisins and a spoon) from me.

And Taylee received a duct tape crafting station from Jason.

He used a little shelf, a shoe organizer, bookcase shelving and some containers for the station.

"EVERYTHING IS COOLER WITH DUCT TAPE!"

The extra effort of homemade gifts is always worth it in the end. It's so fun to see the excitement of giving... and receiving.

Christmas Eve Service

As a part of our Christ-centered Christmas, we served dinner at the homeless shelter, on Christmas Eve.

 We were excited to be chosen to help this year..we've missed the opportunity the past 2 years.

It was different than I expected...less formal and not very long, but still a good way to spend the evening. Grandma McKinley joined us in helping to organize and serve dinner to all the hungry men.

Merry Christmas!

Christmas Eve

After reading the Christmas Nativity story, we passed out our family exchange gifts. Abree received a cute fabric flower headband from Rylee.

Notice the one Rylee is wearing in her hair...ya, sorta like that. :)
Abree gave Rylee a flat iron holder... made from a pot holder.

Treyson was given a pom-pom/marshmallow shooter from Taylee.

My gift to Taylee.

Treyson came up with this gift idea all on his own. He traced the Jazz logo onto nice watercolor paper, then painted and framed it for Jason's desk at work.

Grandpa Waite received Stampede basketball tickets from Jason.

Jason made the ticket holder for his part of "homemade". :)

I received a chalkboard sign from Dad. He had Amber help him come up with the idea and make it. I LOVE it...and have used it for many occasions.

Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve, we had family over to celebrate with Grandpa Waite.

We had a yummy Taco Soup dinner (prepared by Candice...thanks!) and lots of yummy treats.

For the kids under 8 years old we had a........ gift pass?

We all sang Jingle Bells as they passed the gifts in a circle. When the song was done, they opened the gift on their lap.

The rest of us did the traditional white elephant gift exchange game.

Next, we gave Dad (Grandpa Waite) his gift from all of us. He wanted a "shake weight", so that's what we got him. He quoted the commercial, "Only 6 minutes each day, is equal to a 42 minute work out with traditional weights." We all tried the shake weight and played around with it. There's a learning curve to getting it shaking just right.

Levi liked the box it was wrapped in.

He hung out and played in the box for a long time and LOVED it!

You can't tell from these pictures, but he was perfectly content and really did LOVE it.

When it was starting to get late, everyone left to do their own Christmas Eve celebrations.

As a family, we read the Christmas nativity story in Luke, reflected on our services days and opened our homemade family gifts.

As predicted, Abree LOVED her blanket from Treyson. It was so fun to see her excitement and watch Treyson soak up the excitement and gratitude.

For days after Christmas he said things like, "Mom, I think Abree really likes the gift I gave to her." or "Do you think Abree likes her new blanket as much as her old one?" He was so proud. :)

Grandpa read us the book from Taylee.

She had illustrated it with lots of cute detailed pictures too.

Jason liked his Rubik's cube.

He planned on taking it to work to put on his desk.

Taylee liked her scarf.... except for the fact she was poked and found 3 hidden straight pins in the ruffles. Oops!

Treyson thought his walking stick was cool and began asking when we planned on going camping or hiking next.

Taylee kept teasing him that it had her initials on it and that she was going to love using it.

After opening gifts, we set out our stockings for Santa. The kids gathered their bedding and headed to the family room to sleep. It took them a little while to settle down, but they got quiet within an hour or so.

Happy Birthday Jaime!

Last year, Marianne and I took Jaime to breakfast for her birthday. This was significant because Jaime's birthday is on Christmas Eve and she had never spent time with friends on her actual birthDAY.

This year, she invited lots of friends to celebrate. We went to "Goldy's Breakfast Bistro" downtown Boise. It was a quaint little place, so we filled it up with about 15 women.

We talked, we ate, we laughed..... and had an ornament exchange. It was a fun, early-morning celebration. Jaime is hoping to make it an annual thing.

Happy Birthday Sweet Friend Jaime!

The Christmas Post

Ok, here's the Christmas post...

On Christmas Eve, we gathered at our house for a party with my dad. We had a white elephant gift exchange, snacked and played a game.

We also opened gifts from Grandpa Waite. Grandpa gave us a neat gift. He gave us "Our Family Home Evening Journal". It's a notebook with pages in it to fill out as we have our FHE's. Documentation that may become precious in the years to come.

Christmas morning, Jason and I woke up around 7:00am. We got the orange juice mixed up and the sweet rolls baked and then headed upstairs. We thought we'd find the kids waiting to pounce. Instead we found this......
sleepy bedheads!
We were shocked. We had to turn on the light and wake everyone up from their "visions of sugarplums". Then we were told the rest of the story.... Treyson awoke around 4am, woke everyone else up and then was told to go back to sleep, cuz mom and dad would NOT want to start the day that early. (They were totally right about that.)

The kids had slept together in the family room. We had our traditional sweet rolls, orange juice and milk for breakfast.

"Hmmmm, wonder what Santa brought????"

Then it was time for the traditional line-up... youngest to oldest. (Each year the older girls try to convince us to start a new tradition... oldest to youngest. They haven't convinced us yet.)

Treyson had a Bakugan-fest...everything Bakugan.

Rylee got the Nintendo D.S. she was wanting..... lucky.

Abree got her "D.S." a.k.a. V-Smile handheld game system.

Taylee said she was 100% POSITIVE that she would get a Nintendo D.S. from Santa.... she was right. How was she so "100% POSITIVE"???

Jason got BSU attire from Santa.... and some Utah Jazz (wooden) candy canes.

The "Aftermath".

I received a new camera from Santa, that I'm still working on figuring out. (The instructions were printed in a foreign language, so even if I wanted to read them I couldn't.)

In the evening, we went to my mom's house to celebrate and open presents. Each family received emergency preparedness items to put in our 72-hour kits from mom and the grand kids got cool kit type gifts. Treyson's was a model car kit and Abree's was a clothespin doll kit.

Christmas was a wonderful day of celebration and family.