**Christmas**

i hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas! It was a wonderful holiday here...everyone was here at the house...that is everyone but Brandon...so our house was very full! Christmas Eve we went to the 5 o'clock Mass (and came home 2 hours later!!) and had a dinner of tacos...not our traditional Christmas Eve meal, but Shasta and Jon were spending this evening with Jon's mom. And then of course after dinner we opened stocking! Yep, everyone still has a stocking! Dad and Mom make sure that everyone has an equal amount of little treasures in their stockings...home-made stocking at that too!

Christmas morning...the kiddos woke everyone up bright and early (around 8am) and were ready to get started on the gifts! i love Christmas morning because we stay in our pajamas while opening gifts (which takes *all* morning...quite literally!!). The only requirement that we need to meet is that we brush our teeth! i am crazy about brushing my teeth so i don't have a problem meeting that requirement before going upstairs! Soon everyone was here at the house and all the gifts were passes out to each person. Here at our house we take turns opening gifts...so that we can all see what each person is receiving. We opened gifts for a little over an hour and then took a break for breakfast...and then back to the living room! i think we were finally finished around 12:30-1:00!! i think everyone was happy with their gifts...especially the hand-made ones! The younger kids made gifts for each one of us...so sweet and precious!

Then later on, we made our traditional Christmas Eve meal...now everyone was home so we could have the meal...just a day late! Potato sausage and a bunch of other dishes (Scandinavian meal!!) although we did forget the leftsa...oops! But it was still great!

So that was our Christmas! We all enjoyed it...