Christmas Day

I love the moment that all the children come down the stairs and see all the presents and stockings! --their eyes full of wonder and anticipation. It is seriously so beautiful!

We had an absolutely wonderful day as a family! The morning started with stockings and Santa presents, then the pears (rather than oranges this year) and little boxes of sugar cereal from the kids' stockings for breakfast. After breakfast came the rest of the gifts, an hour of church in the afternoon (which was an exquisite musical presentation on Christ), and then playing with all the new toys and eating Christmas dinner leftovers and delicious pecan pie!

Santa always leaves candy canes hanging all over our Christmas tree--even low enough for Sebastian to reach!Santa must have known that the kids had been eating a ton of oranges and "cuties" (those little clementine oranges) in the last couple weeks because he put pears in our stockings instead. Everyone was happy about that--especially Sebastian. He dug in right away!I love how they get so much pleasure from such simple things at this age!Emma and Isabelle both got the "toe" socks they asked for.Isabelle read the note Santa left. It said to go downstairs to see their gift, and he apologized for the hoof prints Rudolf left on it.Santa also left a dart board game and two new wii games.
After breakfast some serious present opening began!Alex made this adorable card and ornament for us at preschool. It think he thought it was funny to close his eyes for the pictures. :)Sebastian was thrilled when he got hold of Tristan's toy gun that shoots these balls.Alex was in heaven with all his new weapons!And Sebastian was ecstatic when he got hold of these as well! He is definitely all boy!Tristan and Alex received remote control cars (and Tristan got a Darth Vader costume). It has been hilarious watching Sebastian chase the cars around in the basement.
Maya still fondly remembers her field trip a year ago where she got to ride a horse. Her name was Basil.
Finally we gave Daddy his present from all of us--a snowblower! It was too heavy for me, so he had to go open the suburban to find it. The kids were very excited and Jeff was definitely surprised.It was very cold to pose for a Christmas day photo, but we did a couple quick ones anyway.After church the kids were back in their pjs and having fun picking candy off their graham cracker houses and playing with their gifts.Isabelle enjoyed her ribbon twirler.Tristan was so happy to get Star Wars legos!Alex couldn't wait for Daddy to play with him with his new knights.I helped Emma make up her bed with her new bedding set. Teal is her favorite color.I feel so blessed to have all these beautiful people in my life, and to be able to celebrate the birth of Christ with all of them. What a wonderful day!