Merry Christmas!

Today is Christmas for all of you, but we were lucky this year because Santa came a few days early for us. He must have known that Lora and Mark were leaving Christmas Eve and wouldn't be here for the big day. So on Friday we had our Christmas Eve. I had pulled a bunch of recipes from allrecipes.com and made sure I had all the ingredients before we started. Robert only had to go back to the store once for something I forgot. Lora and I spent the entire day cooking up our masterpieces. Robert spent the day cleaning the dishes we dirtied and hanging out with the kids with Mark. We had dinner on by 6:30 and it was really delicious. I couldn't believe that everything turned out so well.
After we ate so much we couldn't move we got the kids ready for bed and then read them stories. Mark and Lora had written and illustrated a story book about the kids for the monster's Christmas present. It is really something. The story line was all about the kids playing in the park and using their imagination and the illustrations were so fun and colorful. I should really just take pictures of every page and post it. Hmmmm....maybe I'll do that later... After that story, Robert read The Night Before Christmas and then we acted out the Nativity story. (That is one of the Jones' Christmas traditions we hope to make our own.) After that we left our cookies for Santa and shooed the kids off to bed. Alaina protested the bedtime by saying, "But I love Santa. I miss him! I want to see him!" Ah...thou doth protest too much...

And that just left us the clean up and Christmas set up. Mark and Lora really helped us get ready. Mark somehow put together the boy's sailing ship and Lora and I got the doll house together. Actually...that was mostly Lora while I watched. But 1 a.m. it all looked pretty great. Now, why didn't we get to bed at that time? I don't know when we got to bed, but I do know that Christmas came too early. The times I did sleep, my dreams were filled up with rotten Christmas scenarios...like Robert getting 5 dogs and a cat for us for Christmas or not being able to find the presents. What ever happened to sugar plums dancing in my head?

Christmas morning was so much fun. The kids were so excited to see what they got. Alaina was a little grumpy that Santa didn't hang out and wait for her, but she soon got over it when she saw her "dolly house." The boys loved their pirate ship and everyone loved all of the Christmas presents that family sent to us. Thank you! We played all day long together. It was really a wonderful Christmas.

The day after Christmas we spent the majority of the day playing Settlers of Catan. I'm afraid we were rather addicted to it. (Thanks Nathan & Lindi) While we played we let the kids rot their brains by watching a couple of movies. (Thanks Craig & Robbyn.) At one point there was a bit of commotion from the Living Room. We ran in and found Alaina defending her doll house, quite effectively, from Ethan. I guess she really didn't want him playing with it. That girl is flexible!

Later we found the boys in the living room, pushing around a special present.

Last night we said a sad farewell to Lora & Mark. It was so much fun having you here! It was good to get to know Mark a little more (even if Austin insisted on calling you Uncle Ron.) Come again soon. We'll make a Christmas meal for anyone else who would like to visit as well. Come one...come all!