A Wonderful Christmas Day

We had a fantastic Christmas day with lots of fun and more than enough toys to sink a battleship!! Although we missed our family far away, it was still a good day for us. We had a nice mix of traditions this Christmas. We had the nativity on Christmas eve, since it was the last Monday (or FHE) before Christmas. This is a tradition in my family. After that, we had chex mix and watched the musical Scrooge, which is a Christmas eve tradition in Barth's family. The kids went to bed late, but it was fun to do things with our kids that we did as kids!! The boys had a great time. Amber did her usual thing of being cute as long as she was held and, overall, Christmas eve was a success. On Christmas day, after all the presents were opened, I made the traditional Christmas breakfast. This year we had cinnamon rolls, pancakes, eggs, bacon, sausage, hash browns and orange juice. It was SO YUMMY!!! We got around to eating it at about 10:45. Then I made a Christmas dinner of Ham, roasted potatoes, salad, fruit salad, rolls, Christmas jello, corn and lemonade!!! (We ate at about 6) In between, the kids had a wonderful lunch of m&m's, skittles and smarties left by Santa!!!! I think that among the presents, the sleds that all 3 boys received, were one of the favorites. Let's just hope that we get lots more snow so that those sleds get some good use!!!! The picture above is of all the kids in their Christmas PJ's on Christmas eve!
Here they are on Christmas morning when we first went out to the tree!!! Oh, and I forgot to mention that on Christmas eve, we went ice skating downtown!!!! There is an ice arena outside at Fountain Square which is the main plaza area downtown right by where Barth works. The rink is outside and has cooling coils under the rink to keep it cold in the balmy weather that we have been having here. (It was 38 mid-day when we went!!) Barth stayed outside the rink with Aaron and Amber and I took Weston and Brian out on the ice. We were sure a SIGHT!!!!!! The boys had never been skating before and I made the mistake of renting skates myself. In hindsight, I should have just worn my shoes out on the ice.....it would have been easier to help the boys out that way!!! By about 10 minutes into our skating, Weston and Brian had made it standing up about twice and we had gone a grand total of about 3 feet!!!! There was a photographer there for the local newspaper who took some pictures of the wonderful falling. So far, we haven't seen any pictures in the paper though. :) I remembered the camera, but forgot the card, so sorry there are no pictures from us of this rather comical experience. I think that we finally made it around the rink about 3 times in the almost 1 hour that we were there!!!!!!!! Weston had a blast, but Brian was more concerned that he was all wet!!!!!! It is something that we will have to try again!!!!!! It was a great time!
And no post is complete without a picture of our cute little Bamber! This was taken on Christmas eve!!!!
What a happy little girl!!! We hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas as well!

Oh.....and one more thing.......this is the first Christmas in years that we didn't have to go to the hospital AT ALL!!!!!!!!!!!! Hooray for no asthma attacks or ear infections or anything like that!!!!!!!!!!!