Christmas (follow up post)

We are soooo enjoying the holidays together and Albert's break from work. It's so nice to have him here. This and spring break are the best times of the year for us (summer is not because he has to work constantly to keep the family afloat). Anyhow, since I didn't get a chance to yet, I thought I'd give a recap of how we spent Christmas.
Christmas Eve morning we woke up with the kids and immediately started preparing our traditional Christmas Eve "appetizers". Instead of a big Christmas Eve dinner which results in lots of time spent cooking and cleaning up the kitchen...time which could be used for much better things on Christmas Eve when you have lots of children, we decided a while back to start doing all day long appetizers instead. The way it works is that in the morning we lay out lots of snack-y type things on platters all around the kitchen...on the table and the island. This year we did bagels (cut into bite sized pieces) and cream cheese, veggies and dip, crackers, cheese and pepperoni, a fruit platter, cupcakes, nuts and chocolate covered pretzles. Everyone grazed throughtout the morning. At around three or four in the afternoon we added more substantial fare...meatballs, suasages, shrimp and chicken wings (some regular and some boneless). Plus more cookies, cakes ect. Plenty of food for all. We don't pay attention to how much each kid eats, everyone is free to graze at will throughout the whole day and night. We love doing it that way. No dishes (except the platters when they are empty) no worrying about who didn't eat breakfast, lunch ect..and wayyyy more time to enjoy other aspects of the day.
Around six in the evening we tracked Santa online to see where he was. The kids loved the online tracking displays and Brice kept insisting that he could see Santa's sleigh!
At 7:00 TBS starts 24 hours of "A Chirstmas Story" which our family LOVES! We watched it, though Albert fell asleep here! During the movie the older boys helped me carry down all the wrapped packages to put under the tree. Then each kid selected ONE to open on Christmas Eve night. After that we read the Bible to hear about the first Christmas and the birth of Baby Jesus.
Then we left our cookies out and the boys scrambled into one room to sleep together in ONE bed. Of course they were loud and excited and it took a couple hours and two or three times for me to go upstairs and threaten them with "Santa won't come if you're still awake!" before they settled down.
With the boys in bed and Albert asleep, I watched the TLC special on the birth of the Duggar family's 18th baby while I wrapped the rest of the presents and put them under the tree and started to lay out Santa's gifts. I woke Albert up to help me because some of them were too heavy. That night was the last night Albert was doing the paper route so he left around 1:00 am and hurried through it in order to get home before any kids woke up.
The boys actually slept fairly late. Brandon came down around 7:00 and was so excited to see his new bike that Santa had brought. He laid back down with us until Drew woke up shortly after and discovered his new Guitar Hero. We had then convinced both boys to lay back down a bit until Jackson ran downstairs very excited about his new transformer toys Santa had so graciously brought him and it was everyone up from there. It took a while to get Daddy up as he was still tired for delivering the papers (I told him imagine how Santa feels!) But finally at around 8:00 we had everyone up and ready to open presents. The boys got lots of stuff and everyone was happy with what they had, nobody was greedy and it was a good time. The kids got wayyy more than they needed (after all the worrying I did that there wouldn't be enough).
Drew got Guitar Hero, an Ipod, and Ipod Home, clothes and many other things he wanted. Manny got his basketball goal for outside, his favorite cologne, a ripstick, a new game chair for his room and tons of other odds and ends. Brandon got his new bike, a Nerf Vulcan, tons of wii games and lots of other things (I tell you, its already tough to remember who got what...) Jackson got lots of Transformer and Iron Man toys, movies, games, clothes and Moonsand (his new favorite thing)....Brice got a new bike, lots of games, toys, Hulk Hands (gotta love those) and an assortment of other goodies for a three year old. Isaiah got a see-saw (remember those?) some sweaters, balls, toy cars and toddler stuff. The girls got baby dolls, baby doll stuff, the Rose Petal Cottage (which I LOVE and all the kids who can fit play in). Bree got her first ornament, a baby book and a few other little things. Not too much for her as she was just born and already has more than she needs. I'm also happy to report that I got a brand new gift box with my very favorite perfume "Jadore" in it. I LOVE it.
After opening presents everyone just sort of lounged around playing with new stuff (with us yelling at them to stop opening everything before pieces to things got lost. We had a traditional Christmas dinner of Ham, Macaroni and Cheese (Albert's Grandmother's recipe...so yummy), Green Bean Casserole, Sweet Potatoes, Sweet Potatoe pie, all sorts of good stuff.
I have pictures...didn't take too many except for of Bree cause I kept trying to stuff her into a stocking to take a pic. I'll post them soon. hopefully today but can't promise! Also we made our families a video of the highlights of the whole past year. I'll try to get that up too.