Christmas 2008

So here is a slide show of all of our Christmas pictures. Hope you have patience to look through all 71 pictures. Sorry it's so long.

We had a nice Christmas. It was fun this year with the kids understanding the whole Santa thing. They talked about him all day on Christmas Eve. We went to 5:30 church at First Lutheran, Brian and I had bells and I had my choir. We had our Christmas with the Niebuuhrs after church. A soup supper, then presents for the kids. We put the kids to bed there, then the adults did presents. We got home around 11:30. We didn't get up too early the next morning, but I did make a nice breakfast, then we let the kids open presents then they played while Brian and I opened our presents to each other. We went to the Niebuhrs again for Christmas lunch, then the kids took a nap there while Brian relaxed with his parents and I came home to cook for the evening at my parents house. We went over to the Hoefs around 5, and had a great dinner and presents.

All in all, the kids got WAY too much stuff, but they sure are enjoying what they got. By far the highlight was the Thomas the train things. They got some Thomas stuff from both families as well as Brian and I, plus the train table Brian made. Will and Grace like the table and will play for a while, but Xander absolutely LOVES it. He could play, and in fact has played for hours at a stretch. The morning after Christmas, he went downstairs right after breakfast (about 9:00) and didn't walk away from the trains until 11:30. And he's been playing that much every other day, too. He just loves it. He'll refuse to play with other new things in favor of playing trains. We watched one of their new DVDs the other night and all during the movie he kept saying "I'm not playing trains, mommy." I think a new obsession is born!

They did gets lots of other things besides trains. They got lots of DVDs, books, games and CDs. Grace got dolls of all sorts, a musical tea set, a play house/tent thing, dress up clothes, clothes, and much more. The boys got some outdoor toys, the train stuff, and some cars. They have really liked playing their new Candy Land Castle game. It is a simple shape matching game, but it's right at their level and they love it. Some of the other games like Cadoo, Candy Land and the ABC game are still a little hard. They got lots of movies, and as I said before we watched one the other night. We watched "Little Mermaid" and some of "Cars" the other day. They got probably a dozen DVD's, though. It will take us a while to make it through all of them.

All in all, it was a nice two days. Good food, good company and good gifts. We had a nice time. I think, though, that I will be glad not to hear Jingle Bells and We Wish You a Merry Christmas being sung around my house 24/7. I guess I'll look forward to that for next year! Hope everyone had an enjoyable Christmas. Happy New Year!