Jill, The WARRIOR: Merry Christmas 2006!

Last night was Christmas Eve and we had a very nice time. The Elders came over for our traditional Christmas Eve meal: Peasant Soup, dinner rolls and some mixed berry (non alcoholic) bubbly, followed up by homemade tapioca pudding. We had a fun time with the Elders. After they left, we went over the Christmas story with Anna, sang some songs, and then Tyler put her to bed. We renigged the whole idea of Santa Claus and had Anna put out some cookies and milk for him. We're not entirely sure what sort of Christmas traditions that we want to have in our family and since this is our first Christmas away from family--we're having to decide what we want and what we don't want to do in our family. We want to have a more spiritual Christmas experience instead of focusing on Santa Claus and the whole selfishness that normally accompanies him. I am looking for ideas/thoughts/traditions that you all have done to make your Christmas more about Christ. Please share them, if you can.

This morning Anna slept in--hooray that she doesn't know that most kids are up at the crack of dawn on Christmas morning! She woke up around 9am. I had breadfast ready about 9:30am. She came downstairs and was SO excited about all the new presents under the tree. We ate a breakfast casserole-from this month's TASTE OF HOME magazine. It was...okay, nothing special. I'm on the lookout for a better recipe for next year. We opened presents afterwards. Anna had 23 presents-much more than the desired amount of 3 that we had been thinking to do. Alleigh, my sister, mailed Anna about 14 presents--which Anna was thrilled about! She also got presents from Grandma McElwain, Grammy Pierce, Grandma Dahle, Grandma Hatch, Uncle Evan and her parents--of course! Tyler bought me an extra set of beaters for my handheld kitchen mixer, an electric shaver, a book called "HOLY PLACES" which is a compilation of temple experiences across the world, and then a box of Sees Candies--the scotchmallow kind, my personal favorite. (marshmallow + caramel + dark chocolate =YUM!) Afterwards we just spent time together until the Sister Missionaries came over for lunch. We played some fun games with them and ate lunch. It was very enjoyable. After they left, we prepared for dinner. Two sisters from our ward came over for Christmas dinner. They are from Mexico originally-but just moved here from California. They speak spanish (naturally--they're from MEXICO) and so it really ups my spanish when they come over. We played the same games as earlier and sent them home with goodies and extra ham.

We read scriptures, prayed, and read the last story out of the TALL BOOK OF CHRISTMAS. Anna is very excited about that book and I think she will be happy when we pick it back up next December. One bad thing occured on Christmas Eve--our dishwasher broke. *UGH* Not a nice thing to happen on Christmas Eve & Christmas Day...when we do LOTS of cooking. But alas, we made it through and hope the frigidaire people work the day after Christmas because we'll be calling them! I hope you all had a MERRY CHRISTMAS! Here are some pictures from ours, Enjoy!