Merry Christmas!

Oh boy if there is ever a time to take too many pictures, it is Christmas time.  It's fun to look through them now (just a day later) and decide what to include in the blog.  I left out a ton and anyone that isn't closely related to us will find this boring, I'm sure . . . oh well!  We had a great Christmas.  At times it was bitter sweet for me, because I really missed being in CA, but there were also some great advantages to it "just being us."  (The picture above was taken Thursday.  I was downstairs cleaning, and Jackson came down and "presented" Wyatt.  They had gotten into some adorable baby girl clothes my sister sent.  They both thought they were pretty clever for putting Wyatt in a "santa suit.")

Starting our Christmas Eve program.  Growing up, it was always a tradition to have a little program where everybody contributes something, whether performing a Christmas song, reciting a Christmas poem, leading some sort of game, etc.  I always like doing this every year.

For Jackson's contribution, he lead us in a game of "duck, duck, goose."  To make it Christmasy, we said Christmas names like, "santa, santa, rudolph."  Or whatever came into our heads.  It was pretty funny hearing Jackson say all of the reindeer names, some of them came out quite interesting sounding!

Wyatt's contribution was singing and dancing to Frosty the Snowman.  This was probably his favorite holiday song this year.

Singing "jingle bells" with our annual jingle bell gloves :)

After the program, we had our nativity play . . . I'm thinking I need to put together better costumes!  Both of the boys decided they wanted to be the inn keeper.  So we just had inn keeper, I was Mary, and Erik was Joseph.  I guess we need to keep having more kids, so there are more players for our play.

We actually started out our play with Samuel the Lamanite prophesying about the birth of Jesus to the wicked Nephites.  Wyatt was Samuel, and we all had fun throwing newspaper rocks at him while he was up on the city wall :)

Erik choose his costume out of the things I set out, which shouldn't surprise anyone! :)

Mary was definitely great with child this year!!

Erik took these pictures of Jackson lounging that I thought were pretty funny.

After the play the boys opened up their Christmas Eve presents.  They were so excited to get Christmas jammies and Lego sets from Grammy and Poppy.

They also opened up their Christmas Eve book.  For past few years I've used a secret name on their presents.  On Christmas Eve they find out what they are by opening up the book that goes along with their secret name.  Jackson was "jackalope" this year and Wyatt was "johnny tractor."

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Erik helped Wyatt put together his fire truck.  Wyatt loved playing with it and wanted to sleep with it.  I decided it might be a choking hazard though, so I told him he could have it in the morning.

Jackson with his space ship.

I was pleasantly surprised to see the clock when Jackson finally woke us up Christmas morning.  It was just after 7:00-hooray!  He's really good at waiting until it starts to get light up before he comes in and gets us in the morning.  Wyatt has been waking up at around 7:00 most mornings, so it was not different this morning.  I was even more impressed with Jackson that he didn't even go downstairs by himself (he probably woke up at about 6:00).  He did however, see what Santa brought him from the balcony when he was walking down the hall to Wyatt's room.  I was a little bummed I wasn't with him to see his reaction.

Just woke up and ready to go downstairs!

Even though he had already seen it, Jackson was pretty excited about his bat cave.

And Wyatt was happy with what Santa left him: a train table.

This was the best reaction shot I got.  He was happy to get his map :)

And Kelsey made really cute superhero capes for the cousin gift.  Seriously, so cute!  Jackson and Wyatt love them.

And Wyatt is so cute in his "fire chief boots." 

It really was a fun Christmas.  It's so fun to see how excited the boys were about everything.   I must admit, that I have enjoyed a little more free time the past couple of days because the boys are so occupied with all of their new toys.  I know it won't last too long, but it's nice :)  I am also super excited about the kindle Erik got me.  It's one of those things I would never buy myself, but now that I have one I'm realizing how much I'm going to love it!  Food of course played a big role in our celebrating.  I was most excited about the rainbow jello I made, and the cheesecake.  The cheesecake (though it cracked while baking) was delicious if I do say so myself :)  Now we have enough left overs to last us all week.  How many different ways can we eat ham??

And tonight, I finally let Jackson eat our gingerbread house.  It looked pretty gross, but he said it was "delicious."  Admittedly, he only took a few nibbles before giving up, but it was funny.  He was making up elaborate stories of a witch that lived inside and that he ate-- very entertaining.