Our Christmas Weekend

I spent a frenzied three days last Wednesday, Thursday and Friday buying Christmas food, making sure all of the rooms in the house were clean at the same time and cooking. By the time we arrived at Christmas Eve on Saturday I felt pretty relaxed with most of the work behind me.

We had some friends over on Christmas Eve for lunch. The children did a little Nativity performance. Ethan is a Wise Man and Erica is Mary. This was their second time performing the Nativity this Christmas period. A couple of weeks ago Ethan and Erica participated in a Nativity play at Church. Ethan was Joseph and Erica was an Angel. They both did a fantastic job, however I wasn't able to snap any pictures because I was on the side of the stage helping children know when it was time for them to make their entrance (and taking them to the toilet - 3 children, including Erica, all needed to go to the toilet at the same time after the play had already started).

After our friends had departed, David and I embarked on operation 'wear the children out'. We took them to the park for some laps on their scooters.

We also tried flying kites that we had bought in China. The kite-flying was going well, until they ended up in a big tangled mess.

Above is Ethan and Erica putting out some food for Santa and the reindeers. They picked carrot sticks for the reindeers and a strawberry and piece of rocky road for Santa. You can also see the tangled kites. I was able to detangle them later that night, so we will try round two of the kite flying another day.

The Christmas tree after Santa had dropped by.

The children woke us up at the very civilized time of 7:30am (love having a child who can read the time!). We allowed the kids to open a couple of presents and then we ate our Christmas breakfast (above). David then dashed off to Church. Ethan, Erica and I followed later.

David spoke at church and did a great job (he has lots of material now having done Christmas talks for the last three years in a row!). After Church Erica and I headed home to prepare lunch (above), while David and Ethan visited a lady from our ward.

Somewhere around 2pm-ish the children were finally allowed to open the rest of their presents. They were incredibly patient. Above is Erica opening a present to reveal a shirt. She didn't find that too exciting.