Christmas...on the 26th

(This picture was taken the Sunday before Christmas)

 

This year Jason had to work Christmas day, which was very hard for him because Christmas is his all time favorite holiday.  We decided that we would hide Santa's presents before the kids woke up until the next day when Jason got home (whenever that was going to be noon maybe) but we would let them have their stockings.

I got to be the lucky one and break the news to the kids.  For sure I thought Olivia was going to break down, she had been counting down every morning for the last two weeks but I was wrong, Madi had a complete break down.  Then I explained to them how hard their dad works and that he is the one who bring home all the money so that we can have presents and that he doesn't want to miss out on all the fun and if it was them who had to miss all the fun they wouldn't like that.  That made it all better.

They decided to write letters to Santa asking him to leave a little present in their stocking so they had something to do Christmas morning.

 

So Christmas Eve Jason did not have to work, but he had to go to bed early so that he could be at work by 5:00am, so we did our usually Christmas Eve Dinner and Family Night on the Birth of our Savior and then went around looking at lights.  I could tell Jason wasn't enjoying it as much as he had in the past but we made the most of the situation.  When we got home we put food out for the reindeer, a plate of cookies and milk for Santa and then the girls left their notes out for Santa. 

 

Christmas Day the tree looked the same because "dad had hide the presents before he went to work" but the stocking were full and Santa delivered them with an extra present in their stocking, which was totally worth it because they played with those things for at least a couple of hours and the game "Headbands".

Then that night for dinner the Dunlavy's invited us over for dinner.  To tell you the truth I wasn't going to go, not because of them but just because I didn't want to intrude on someones Christmas, but then thought why not, we can get out of the house and the kids can play with their kids' new toys.  But really it was very nice of them to invite us over and we had a nice dinner and the kids played while we talked.

The 26th, originally Jason was going to be doing surgery until around Noon so that's what we planned but at 9:00am the garage door was going up and he was home.  The kids and I were very excited!  He got lucky and the surgery that he was supposed to do got bumped back a couple of hours and he told them he wasn't waiting around until noon to even start the surgery and came home.

 

 

We told the kids to wait upstairs while we put out the presents Santa had brought and the ones from Jason and I, took some pictures just like we would had on Christmas morning minus the stocking and had the kids come down. It turned out to be a FUN Christmas...I think everyone got just what they wanted plus some!