Saturday, December 27, 2008

Christmas Recap 2008

It has been a wonderfully full and fun couple of days for our family...as we hope it was for yours as well. Here are a few of the highlights, beginning with Christmas Eve:

Tony and the kids finding their "ch'i" over our family's traditional Christmas Eve Chinese take-out dinner...

...enjoying our white chocolate Christmas bears we receive from my Grandma Cranney each year...

...setting out fudge and cookies (Sam decided that Santa wanted white chocolate macadamia nut cookies this year) for Santa and carrots for the reindeer after we read The Tale of Three Trees and the Nativity story in Luke 2...

We have received lots of counsel about simplifying our lives, our church service and our homes this past year, and we took this advice as well as the advice of Elder Oaks to heart. Since we will be seeing much of our family in January and Megs is in Utah this Christmas, it was just our family so we scaled WAY back on gifts for each other and the kids. At first, I was a little worried about how they would react, but they didn't even notice the difference. But Tony and I did. We spent more time resting, playing our new games and enjoying the kids than ever before. It also helped us keep Christ in Christmas this year.

Anna with her treasure box of new Barbie clothes....

...Sam and Tony reading about rain forests...

...and Josh demanding to wear a pair of his new socks from grandma OVER his footie pajamas. In between begging for us to unwrap a mini peanut butter cup for him, that is.

Then last night, Tony and I met up with our good friends Troy and Kristi at Mahoney state Park for dinner and a play. It was so fun to get to visit over dinner and dessert and we laughed ourselves silly at "Every Christmas Story Ever Told." It was such a fun evening.

It seems like the Christmas season went really quickly this year...so quickly that I plan on leaving the tree up until the kids go back to school. Just because.

12 comments:

Our Complete Family said...

So glad you guys had such a wonderful Christmas! We, too, scaled back and it was such a good thing!
Love the Chinese take out photo. You guys are too funny!
Merry rest of December hun~ Les

Kristi said...

Oh I love those little socks on the footie pajamas! I'm so glad you guys had such a wonderful Christmas!! And last night was a blast! We will seriously have to do it again SOON!!!

Albanie said...

Glad you guys had a good time. The kids look so happy and I love all the Chinese faces! :)

Kathleen said...

we're glad that you guys had a fun christmas! the "chi" picture is just too funny...and christian has a thing about socks too...they're just so important and all!

zakkalife said...

Love the "The Tale of the Three Trees". It's such a great story.

Looks and sounds like you had a wonderful Christmas.

Happy Holidays

Tonia said...

I love the Chinese food tradition! Looks like you did have a wonderful Holiday!

ME said...

What a great recap. SOunds like lots of fun was to be had. You and your family are so inspiring. We are missing all our Nebraska neighbors. Glad to hear you had a wonderful Christmas.

Jeni said...

You guys look like you would be ready for an assignment to Japan.

I LOVE the whole simplify theme.

The three trees is one of my all-time favorites!

Nicole said...

It sounds like you guys had a wonderful Christmas. I like the idea of Chinese takeout for Christmas Eve! I'm so excited to meet you in a few weeks! We scaled things back a lot too, it was actually really nice.

Nicole said...

We read Tale of the Three Trees, too! So glad you enjoyed Christmas. :)

Bonnie B. said...

I love reading about everyone's Christmas traditions! What a fun Christmas!!

Jenn said...

What a wonderful Christmas. You have some great traditions!