Our First Christmas - part 1

**please note that I know this isn't our first Christmas together...**

This is the first year we have stayed home for Christmas, and in many ways it feels like our first. Just because when we have gone elsewhere there is often so many mini "Christmas mornings" (times to open presents) that there never is the excitement and the awe that comes with Christmas morning.

Yesterday, we had an awesome Christmas eve. It was as perfect as it could be with two toddlers. Jonathan went to work early (he had some stuff he needed to do in the lab etc). I slept through my alarm and woke up when the kids woke up! They even slept in til 7:30! That was nice to get some good, solid sleep. We did our normal thing, until noon when daddy came home. We ate lunch, and Jonathan played with both kids while I got ready for the day (don't judge). We all played for a bit and then Corbin went down for a nap and we made dinner!

We had chicken cordon bleu, steamed broccoli, and Parmesan rice. I also made breakfast for today (breakfast casserole), Cambria helped, so I'm hoping that she will try it since she helped me. While Jonathan was finishing up with making dinner, I decided last minute that I wanted to add a center piece in hopes to make the meal feel a little fancier.

Not bad for a last minute, thrown together, used what we have, center piece, eh? I'm really happy with how it turned out, and it really did make the meal feel fancier. Cambria kept admiring it during dinner, that made me feel good.

Oh, and we had slushy punch, it was delicious. When I grew up, a nice meal wasn't a nice meal without some fancy drink. When Jonathan grew up, a nice meal was served with water (every other meal was served with milk). I think it was done that way intentionally, "fill up on the good food that we made". My family's thought process was "the meal needs to be complete, everything needs to taste good, including the drink". I may be putting words in people's mouths, but that's what we thought was the reason behind it.

Anyway...

After dinner, we talked about Jesus, and got ready to act out the nativity. We grabbed blankets, scarves, and my one bath robe...

again... not bad eh? Corbin wouldn't hold still long enough to do anything besides throw a sheet over his shoulder. But it still made me giggle with how cute he was when he tried to walk or crawl with his big poof. We talked about the Christmas story, and tried to act it out with not enough actors, and certainly not enough actors that knew what they were doing.

We talked about how Heavenly Father gave us Jesus Christ, and what can we give back. I said that I was going to give the gift of being more grateful (more on that later). I felt the Spirit, and I'm grateful that through the craziness, the Spirit was still there.

Then we watched some Christmas videos and got ready for bed.

oh man, what a power struggle bedtime was! Cambria knows what comes after Christmas eve... and she was so excited for presents! We got her down easily enough, but then she closed her eyes for a few seconds, opened them up and said "I see the 7!" (We told her that she needed to wait till she saw the 7 before she came out). She then came out of her bed and was convinced that she was done with the night. I tried talking to her for a minute, but it was no use. Corbin was having a hard time too, so I went into the room and picked him up and tried to calm him down. I don't know what all was said, but it probably took about 10 minutes for Jonathan to convince Cambria that she needed to sleep. She climbed into our bed (the only way he could get her to lay down) and quickly fell asleep.

We thought that was the end of it, nope. She got up at midnight, and at 4:00, both times needing some serious convincing to climb back into bed. Thankfully we didn't put the presents out until 6:00 this morning. Now, here we sit with our tree on, and the overflowing presents under it, just waiting for her to wake up. I'm not complaining though, she needs the rest!