Christmas!

 We had such a wonderful Christmas day this year. I love the excitement of Christmas and all of the traditions and spending time together. One of my favorite traditions is having mini-stockings under the tree. When they kids wake up early (and Shantel and I want to still be sleeping they can go out to the stockings they laid out and they'll find them filled with breakfast type items (cereal, oranges, bananas) etc. They are really excited about it and get some food before they get to all the candy - and it let's Shantel and I sleep a little big longer. Then next up was a picture on the stairs. 

After that we read the Christmas story together. 

Then we headed downstairs to look at stockings. 

We passed out presents and we even had one for Lydia's bird (Polly). This year we used names for presents from Narnia (see Christmas Eve post for the names we used). We passed out presents and took turns opening. 

Lydia was so excited for each of us to open our presents from her and so most of us started with those. They were such thoughtful gifts. Lydia built Lucy an amazing wardrobe where she can hang her princess dresses and it even had fold out shelves on the outside where Lucy could put her princess crowns. 

Lydia made me a game storage thing that is super awesome and I've started using to store my favorite games. 

She made Shantel and advent calendar wreath that was so beautiful. Lydia worked really hard to try and keep everyone's gifts a secret as much as possible. 

Soon the presents were opened and the kids were so happy and just wanted to enjoy their new gifts. Lydia was reading a book and Austin and Caleb were playing with their new toys. 

Shantel and I took our time getting ready to go to Morgan and did some clean up and gave the kids plenty of time to play before heading up to Morgan. Most of the presents were a pretty big hit and our kids were excited and happy.