Dallin and I are still evolving our family Christmas traditions, but here's what we did this year and we had a great time. Growing up, my family always did most of the celebrating on Christmas Eve including the fancy Christmas feast, reading the Christmas story, opening presents, and eating See's Candies, english toffee, peanut brittle, and whatever else my mom had baked up. On Christmas day we had a fancy breakfast and saw what we got from Santa in our stockings then just spent the rest of the day playing, eating and sleeping. Dallin, of course, grew up with the traditional Christmas morning hoopla which always included a box of .22 shells, biscuits and gravy for breakfast, and an orange in the stocking. We wanted to combine traditions as well as keep Christmas Eve more on the spiritual side, so we decided to have the fancy Christmas dinner (I insisted), tried to read the Christmas story, and opened a few special presents. As for the dinner, even though I had tried to keep it down to the essentials (ham, creamed potatos, jell-o salad, and orange rolls) it still took me all day to prepare. However, it was delicious as ever. 
When Talmage got done eating, he wandered around as usual playing here and there- until I realized that he was under the table and was being very quiet. He was fine, but my last batch of rolls that were still sitting on the heater to rise on the other hand, well let's just say that the one year old thought his finger made a very interesting indentation in each of the little dough balls! 
Fortunately, when I put them in the oven they filled right back out. After dinner, we had some time so we cut out and decorated the cookie dough I had previously made. The kids both loved this. (Notice the flour on Talmage's forehead).
Then we attempted to read the Christmas story (from the scriptures), but that didn't go over too well, so next year we will have to try a kid friendly way of conveying the story. We'll probably try to act it out or read one of the kids' stories.
When Talmage got done eating, he wandered around as usual playing here and there- until I realized that he was under the table and was being very quiet. He was fine, but my last batch of rolls that were still sitting on the heater to rise on the other hand, well let's just say that the one year old thought his finger made a very interesting indentation in each of the little dough balls! Fortunately, when I put them in the oven they filled right back out. After dinner, we had some time so we cut out and decorated the cookie dough I had previously made. The kids both loved this. (Notice the flour on Talmage's forehead).
Then we attempted to read the Christmas story (from the scriptures), but that didn't go over too well, so next year we will have to try a kid friendly way of conveying the story. We'll probably try to act it out or read one of the kids' stories.Then it was time for a couple of presents. We tried to help Kaia understand what Christmas was all about so we explained that we had the presents because we were celebrating Jesus' birthday. Instead of understanding, she was really quiet, got a really sad look on her face, her bottom lip began to pout and she nearly cried when she responded, "But if Jesus opens all of the presents, then Kaia won't get any." Of course it was funny, but it was also heartbreaking to see how upset she was. (Knowing her birthday was "soon", she also had a hard time swallowing the fact that first it was Jesus' birthday, then it was mama's birthday, and THEN it would be her birthday.) Anyway, she perked up after she got to open some presents. For Christmas Eve we decided to let them open the presents that I plan on giving them each year- a Christmas book, an ornament, and jammies. (Thanks for the inspiration Amy.)
It was a wonderful, peaceful time just being with our little family.
No comments:
Post a Comment