Christmas!

Christmas seems to come and go so fast every year and this year was no exception!  Christmas Eve I spent the morning baking and cleaning while the kids were watching Christmas movies.  Rick had to work Christmas Eve and ended up having to drive to LA (but he brought back a wonderful surprise, fried macaroni and cheese cake from the cheese cake factory!) After all the baking and cleaning was done my mom came and picked up the kids and took them to her house so Merrie and I could run some goodies around to a few friends, and pick up a few last minute things.  We then gathered at my parents house to do some Christmas caroling for our neighbors.  We had BBQ for dinner, the kids opened their Christmas jammies, and my mom even gave them a bath so they would be ready for bed!  The kids and I then headed home to get ready for some of Rick's family to come over.  Matthew and I made reindeer food and sprinkled it all over the lawn!  Then it was time to get Rick from work.  We came home and exchanged gifts with Rick's Mom and his sister Susie's family!  After Rick's family left it was off to bed with the kids so that Santa could come!   

Lilly fast asleep in her Christmas jammies!

Matthew conked out in his Christmas jammies!

Christmas morning after Santa visited our house! 

We allowed the kids to open one gift each before church.  Which conveniently turned out to be there Christmas church outfits (wink wink).  Matthew was actually ok not opening the rest of his gifts until after church!  Matthew loves going to church and he was really upset that church was only one hour that day, he really wanted to go to Nursery!  Rick had to take him down to the Nursery room to show him no one was down there!  Next Sunday is going to be interesting!  (Matthew is going to be a sunbeam...I foresee a meltdown!)  After Church we came home and had lunch while we opened presents!

Matthew was soooo excited!  Here he is in his Sunday outfit getting ready to open presents. (we made him take a bite of his lunch in between opening each gift to slow him down and to give us a chance to clean up the paper.)

This is the best picture I could get of Lilly in her Christmas dress...she was busy eating!

Matthew was very specific about his Christmas list this year!  Santa knew exactly what he wanted! 

Matthew loves Thomas the train!

Lilly loves Tangled!!  Here she is giving her Rapunzel doll a kiss.

Here's Rick wearing Lilly's Santa hat!

Matthew was really excited about this present!

Matthew has been asking for his own tools since September!  Dad thought they were pretty cool too!

Cute little Lilly enjoyed ripping the paper off her presents.

Lilly was really excited about this "baby"

After all the presents were opened and the room was cleaned up it was time for Lilly to take a nap.

So while Lilly napped Rick and Matthew busted out the tools!

After Lilly woke up from her nap we got dressed and headed over to my parents house to do gifts with them!

I think by this time Lilly was burnt out on opening presents!

On of Lilly's favorite gifts, her very own cell phone!  She even got a new purse!

We had a truly wonderful Christmas!! Matthew was the perfect age to enjoy Christmas this year! Everything was magical for him and that made everything magical for me!! He also loved talking about the story of the first Christmas (he even memorized most of it and could tell the whole story if you asked him questions about it!) He loved playing with his Little People Nativity set (and he cried yesterday when I boxed it up.) The first time I told him the story of Baby Jesus this year he had some interesting things to say! 

Me: When Mary and Joseph traveled to Bethlehem Mary had to ride a donkey. 

Matthew: Why? ( typical 3 year old thing to say!)

Me: Because they didn't have cars back then.

Matthew: Why?

Me: Because cars hadn't been invented yet.

Matthew: (Looks at the hot wheels car in his hand puts it down and slides it towards Mary and Joseph) well they can use my car.

Me: Thank you Matthew that's very sweet, I'm sure they'd appreciate that.

After Mary and Joseph got to Bethlehem there was nowhere for them to sleep.

Matthew: What?! That's not very nice! Someone needs to share!