Merry Christmas to All!

Traditions... We all have them. In my family, we used to go to Christmas Eve dinner at Wall Street, go look at lights, and then wake up to Santa, presents, and my mom would fix a breakfast brunch. Stuart's family has always gone to church, either gone out to dinner or eaten something quick, opened all gifts on Christmas Eve, and then had Santa and a fancy traditional Christmas meal on Christmas Day. Since we have been married, we have done a little of both... Church on Christmas Eve and presents with Yeager family, then Santa and presents with my family on Christmas day, breakfast with my family, traditional lunch with his, and a nice Christmas Day dinner with my family again that night. Since Mom has been gone, we won't continue those traditions with my family and since having kids, things have changed too. We want to have Santa at our house and maybe now it is my turn as "the Mom" to start cooking dinners and starting our own new traditions. As our kids grow up we will make some new traditions and continue and modify old ones.

This year, I cooked a nice traditional Christmas Eve dinner. We did not attend the candlelight service at church because the kids are so young and it was really really cold out and I didn't want to get Hudson out in the cold. I cooked an assortment of appetizers, a ham, twice baked potatoes, candied sweet potatoes, squash casserole, corn casserole, rolls, salad, and a pumpkin pie. Mimi brought over deviled eggs, some additional appetizers, green beans and cheese, and a pecan pie. We had a ton of food but it was very very good. We ate at my dining room table for the first time and ate with my china, Christmas china, nice silverware, and Christmas place mats my mom gave me after we got married. It was really nice to finally have the opportunity to use all of our nice wedding gifts! After dinner, we opened all of our gifts while listening to Christmas Carols. Mimi and Pops went home and this morning we slept until 11:30 (not sure how much longer my kids will let us do this) and woke up to Santa. I cooked a pot of chili and cornbread muffins and we have laid around all day playing with new toys.

My snowflake Christmas China

Dinner table

Hannah's place setting

Mimi and Hannah

Pops and Hudson

Hannah loves her Doctor Bag

Hannah enjoyed opening presents but got worn out and overwhelmed. Every time we would open a present she would want us to "open it" as it take it out of the box, all the dang twisty ties off, etc., then she would want to play with it and not continue opening gifts. We finally made it through all of the gifts.

Hannie loves her new tricycle and is learning to ride it!

The kids will also love their new wagon!

Brother got into the spirit! While Hannah opened all of his gifts for him.

Then this morning, Santa came! Santa was busy last night un-twisty tying and opening almost everything due to the learning experience of last night. Still she was so overwhelmed by the volume of gifts that she didn't even want to look at everything. She just wanted to play with Elmo.

She showed Hudson some of his new toys

She helped us clean up with her new vacuum cleaner. Once she had moved on to playing with it there was no going back to unwrapping. We still have several wrapped gifts waiting for to open from Santa but she has been too busy playing with her new things to want to see what is in there. She still has to open her gifts from my family later this weekend and a birthday on Tuesday...

We wish you a Merry Christmas, we wish you a Merry Christmas, we wish you a Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year!