{Yes, I just put 12/25 next to "Christmas Day". Consistency!}
We celebrated Christmas Day at our house this year. Typically, my mom's side of the family goes to Grandma & Papa's for lunch/dinner, but this year was a bit different so we had my parents, Brian & Keri, and my Grandparents over for lunch/dinner at our house.
My parents joined us for breakfast. No pictures, but it was yummy!
Then we opened presents - Hugo first.
The boys were very excited to get new guns and masks. (They wear the masks everywhere now!)
Train piggy-banks with their names on them - Grandpa immediately pulled out his wallet and started filling the banks, haha!
Every year I make my parents a photo calendar with all the grandkids. It's a hit with the kids as much as the grandparents.
The real reason we invite Grandparents to join us for Christmas Day - Grandpa sets up all the toys for us!
In the afternoon, everyone else joined us for dinner and more presents.
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| Grandpa & Claire |
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| Sweet Kenely |
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| Great Grandma & Nate |
After everyone left, we opened our stockings together. We're still trying to figure out the place of stockings in our Christmas. I grew up with stockings (kind of) being an afterthought, but lots of presents under the tree. John grew up with one big present under the tree and all sorts of cool little things in his stocking.
We had a great Christmas and we've already started talking about what we'd do differently next year:
- Fewer presents: All the kids got burnt out on presents and they really would have been happy with just a few good ones.
- Later dinner: We tried to have dinner super early so people could get home and relax in the evening, but it would have been way more relaxing to have dinner at a normal time so kids could have naps and we wouldn't be rushing around with a set schedule. A later dinner would also help separate the chaos of presents from Christmas morning and Christmas Eve.
- Figure out stockings for our family: Like I said, John and I grew up with completely different stockings but we're not attached to either way - we'll just have to talk it over for next year and see what/when we'll do it.
3 comments:
I am super on board for the late dinner thing!
I liked that we did stockings first thing Christmas morning this year with just us. I am one of those people who loves putting tons of little awesome things in stockings though, and I don't know how that would work on a year when we would open presents immediately before or immediately after.
I also plan to do fewer presents next year! I personally for myself prefer lots of little awesome things as opposed to 1 big thing, but at this age with the girls it just makes sense to give them fewer things so that they actually play with them!
A stocking idea my friend has done with her girls (now 11 and 9) since they were young. Every year each person writes down what they want to give Jesus for His birthday. The paper is dated and put into the stocking and they are all read each year. It's pretty funny what the girls said when they were very young "I want to give a purple dinosaur." Parents tend to write more "spiritual" things that are also good rememberences.
Keri, it's so hard to only buy them a few presents but I agree. This year I even went and bought more because under the Christmas tree looked so empty. (rolling my eyes)
Susan, what a great idea! I love it!
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