Christmas Morning!

I always love Christmas morning. What a totally fun time even with all the chaos. The kids were all excited about everything they got. We tryed to stay away from too many toys this year and went more for "activities." The kids didn't come get us until just after 7 am and I was very grateful about that. We even had to wake Brandon up! He's usually the first one up every other morning. He must have been really tired. Carli was so fun this year because she understood what was going on. She loved opening the presents (very carefully and small pieces at a time) and then she wanted to play with each thing before moving on to the enxt thing. The rest of the kids wanted to tear through the gifts and then step back to play.

Then we had our traditional abelskiver breakfast (little round puff pancakes--YUMM!). We all settled in and played games, watched movies, and just relaxed and enjoyed each other and all the new stuff.

Megan with her Easy Bake Oven (activity, right?)

I made each of the kids new fleece blankets. Here's Megan with hers.
I got this beautiful diaper bag and I'm so excited about it. A friend who moved away sevearl months ago makes them and sells them on etsy.com (you can find her stuff with the username carolbonnett). It is so well made and gorgeous. I can't wait to use it!

Kate and her sewing machine. I don't think she was very excited about it...lol!

The kids were excited to get money from Nana and Papa. She's also listening to her mp3 player she got in her stocking. The 3 older kids all got them and have been listening to them almost non-stop for the last 2 days. They don't realized they are yelling when they are listening and trying to talk to someone. Too funny!

Here's Carli concentrating really hard opening her gift. Too cute!

She got so excited about each gift. It was so adorable.

Here she is getting ready to put a diaper on her doll. She also got little doll beds for the dolls she got last year for Christmas. She didn't need a new blanket as I gave one to her last year so she got little blankets for her dolls.

Brandon loves his mp3!He was also excited about the money!

Ben got this cool Colts jersey. Doesn't he look great in that blue?

All in all it was a very merry Christmas. We were sad we couldnt' be together with any family, but we have my mom, dad, and youngest brother, Brett, coming this weekend. We can't wait to spend time with them! We were able to talk to a lot of family on the phone and even had a white elephant-type movie exchange over the phone with my family in Utah. That was fun!

Later we had a really delicious Christmas dinner. It was a really special day with the kids and just being together as a family. What a blessing it is to have the gospel in our lives and be able to celebrate the birth of our Savior, Jesus Christ. May we keep the Christmas spirit all year long!