Time Traveler: Christmas 2010

(Left) Christmas Decorations
(Above) Gingerbread House
Yes, we're still updating. Yes, we're skipping fun family events. Yes, I would love to include them. And yes, I finally found a small amount of time to do some blogging. What a surprise! But, there's five kids and you can't possibly know how hard it is! I'm not even Mom! Well, at least, if we're going to skip some minor events than let's just add the big ones!
Christmas!!! Our family absolutely loves Christmas! It's one of the biggest holidays. But, of course our family has to super-size. We make Christmas even bigger than most people can imagine. We do so much preparing. If you come to our house you'll see that we're thoroughly contaminated with the Christmas Spirit. :)
We do so much work it's like a chore (one exciting one!). First, we have to get all of our decorations out. We have about a million huge black tubs filled with Christmas decorations. We've got wreaths, ornaments, lights, little statues, glass figures and of course the tree toppings!
That's our families 3rd favorite part about Christmas! (1st: The story 2nd: Opening presents)
It takes a really long time for our family to put out the Christmas decorations. We have to hang the lights outside above the garage along with hanging up several different wreaths. We have to put up our real, good smelling, Christmas tree with it's icicles, ribbon, fabric, star and ornaments. Then, we put up the green furry stuff on the stairs and hang the remaining ornaments on the string of the green thing.We have to put out little statues everywhere, hang up the stockings, get out the silver ware, dinner plates, dinner bowls, tablecloth, centerpieces and pictures. Then, we're almost done, we have to make the gingerbread house!
We buy those kits to make our special gingerbread houses. We don't need the homemade gingerbread to have a fantastic candy house. We put it together with the frosting, tasting the frosting at some moments (our family's candy house is so good, you should try it! On 2nd thought we put our dirty little hands all over it, you might not want to!). Then, we add the candy. Some kids in our family like to delicately place all the candy (like me ) and some other like to just throw the candy on. By the end though, it looks really good. When my mom took the picture up above of our candy house she had to make sure she didn't slip on all the candy that was spilled on the floor.
During the waiting for Christmas a lot goes on. School, then winter break, making hot chocolate, buying presents, singing carols while doing chores, going on adventures, and making sure we have jackets on. There's two things that you don't get to do during the regular but, get to do it in December. 1: Wearing jackets. 2: Having that feeling inside your stomach that will never go away. The feeling is anticipation for all the winter holidays that you only get to experience once a year.It's not a bad feeling, it's a wonderful, exciting feeling that you don't get to fell everywhere you go.
But, finally the time goes so quickly it just rushes past you in the wind. You soon find yourself on Christmas Eve night making homemade cookies for Santa, getting the carrots out of the fridge for the reindeer, secretly enjoying a cookie or two behind the kitchen counter, writing a note to Santa, and wishing your parents good night. At least that's what we find ourselves doing.
This is what happened Christmas morning:
We all woke up at 6:30 AM and rushed, in our pajamas, and super excited, to our parent's bedroom and woke them up easily. Bode pamper-slammed mom in the face, Ainsley rushed to sides and started poking him in the ear, I waited so willingly while Maverick and Walker were singing a carol. Once they woke up and saw us they told us to not go downstairs until they had the video camera. We all ran downstairs once this happened and saw the presents.
Of course, being kids we looking in our fuzzy white stockings and instantly set our eyes on the chocolate candy. Once we had a bellyful of candy we eyed the presents. We started to open them while taking turns so Mom could take pictures and still have time to move the dog :) ! We found that we had gotten some really cool presents! We were very grateful. Mom, being a good cook, than served us up some casserole. We ate it then read the story of Christ's birth out of our scriptures.
Our parents than described that presents and decorations isn't everything. We knew the story of his birth. How Mary was pregnant and traveled on a donkey to a stable. How Joseph asked person after person if she could stay. They all said no. He finally found a person who owned a little stable that Jesus could be born in. He was born, the wise came and offered beautiful presents. The shepherds came too. Being just a summary of the nativity it isn't that long but it is still true.
We hope that you had a good Christmas too!