Christmas Eve & Day

On Christmas Eve all played games and the one that stole the show was Rock Band. John loved playing the guitar, probably because it is similar to playing the violin.

Here we are all enjoying the wonderful food and playing Rock Band still. We also played pictionary with Christmas Carols and other Christmas words.

Christmas Eve Santa was busted at our house. He was making too much noise and it woke the dogs and I. I managed to sneak down our stairs and get a picture of him.

Here is our Christmas tree. It was one of the most perfect trees I had ever seen.

Jessica got a new coat and was modeling it for us.

John loves books.
He received some for Christmas as well as got a gift card to his favorite book store.

Abbi on her scooter. She and Jess both got a razor scooter from Santa.

Abbi and her Barbie, that is all she wanted for Christmas and she got a lot of Barbie items.

Dave and Josh were in town and got up early just to see the kids open presents.

John getting into his stocking. There was an MP3 player in there and he has loved putting all of his classical music and church hymns on it.

Jessica also had an MP3 player in her stocking. She has a wide variety of music on hers, from classic rock,church hymns, the Beach Boys, and Country songs.

Fun Things Leading up to Christmas

Oh, the wonderful Christmas Programs. This was Abbi's first year and I was surprised that she sang out and was not shy.
Singing Jingle Bells with their bells a ringing, it was cute.

John loves to sing and is good at it. In one of the songs they sang all of the kids must have forgot the words, but their John was singing out nice and loud. It was as if he had a solo.

In this next picture Jessica was not too happy to see the camera.

With Christmas come all of the fun activities before hand. One of my favorites is the baking that we do and of course you have to make a gingerbread house. Now don't get all excited thinking that I made this completely on my own. My mom knew how busy I was and thought that making a gingerbread house would be a fun project for the kids and I to make. So, she bought a kit and we just had to put it together and decorate it.

The kids were so proud of the gingerbread house they made. I helped a little, but they did the decorating.





Christmas Eve we were at my mom's house. We did the same thing we always do. We eat, play games, sing songs, and enjoy one an others company. The kids always open on present Christmas Eve. This is of course the highlight of their night. This year Matt invited three of his buddies from work. They are all single guys with no family around. I was glad that Matt invited them so they would not be alone on Christmas Eve. So that this post does not end up being too long I will post pictures of Christmas Eve with pictures from Christmas day.

Christmas Pictures

I usually take the kids Christmas pictures much earlier than on Christmas Eve. This year we have been very busy though and Christmas Eve is when they were finally taken. Here are my favorites from the Christmas 2008 photo shoot.

Abbi adores her big brother and insisted that she have her arm around John in this next shot.