Christmas Day . . . .

At the beginning of the month, we had a Family Home Evening talking about the meaning of Christmas.  The first thing I asked Ava was why we celebrate Christmas.  She yelled enthusiastically, "To Get Presents!"  I then asked her who's birthday we are celebrating for Christmas and she yelled, "Santa Clause!"  She was so proud of herself thinking she had the right answers.  I, on the other hand, had failed as a mother.  That night we talked about the meaning of Christmas.  We made little presents for Jesus filled with the "gifts" we were giving him and hung them on the tree.  Ava got her own little nativity set to put in her room and she played with it the whole month.  We took the kids to a live nativity which was amazing.  Ava asked a million questions and loved seeing everything acted out.  We really focused on Christ this season and on Christmas Eve, Ava gave the whole family the shortened version of the Christmas Story.  I was really proud of my girl.  I also felt somewhat better about my ability to parent my children.  :)

We also started Elf on the Shelf which was such a highlight!  We named him Jazzy.  The kids loved finding him every morning and the hider himself enjoyed it almost as much!  Ava would find him first thing when she woke up.  She would tell us to not show Kai because he had to find him himself!  Then she would promptly run to Jazzy and point him out to Kai because she was so excited.  It is definitely a tradition we will be continuing.  My favorite part was reading Christmas books every night.  I put all of our Holiday books away until after Thanksgiving then we read them every night until Christmas is over.

What a fun Christmas Day we had!  Ava was so excited to put out Christmas cookies and milk and was even more excited to see the remains of them the next morning.  The kids let us all sleep until 8:30.  Merry Christmas to all of us!  Their big ticket items this year were a dollhouse and train set.  My sister mentioned that it could have been a Christmas straight out of the 50's with the gifts they got. 

This year was such an amazing Christmas and I'm sad to see it end.  I love the togetherness, hot cocoa, lights, Christmas tree, nativities, and excited smiles from my kids.  Such an amazing 2010 Christmas!