More Christmas

Blogging takes a lot of time - but here I am finally to finish up with Christmas! Let's start with pictures!

On Christmas Eve we headed over to my sister Rachel's house for our traditional festivities. The girls opened presents from Grandma and Grandpa - cute aprons!

Then it was time to head home for a little Christmas Eve with the girlies. This is when the first, of my favorite Christmas 2009 memories, took place. We read from Luke 2 about Christ's birth:

And then we read from the Book of Mormon about the events surrounding the birth of Christ on the American continent:

And then we had family prayer and when we were done, Kelcie was wiping away tears and when we asked her why, she said it was because she felt the Spirit so strongly and that she was so grateful that we had a Savior who was born for us and sacrificed his life for us. It was one of the most precious moments and I will always remember it as one of my favorite memories from this Christmas.

Then we shooed girls off to bed so Santa could come.

Interesting how the older the kids get, the smaller the presents are and the more expensive they become...

Erika's touch screen MP3 player, camera, video recorder, etc. etc. etc. The thing practically sings and dances!

Hailey's art and sketching sets - time to start cultivating that talent!

And Kelcie's baby doll set - this is probably our last year for little girl toys under the tree! I was worried Kelcie would think it was too babyish for her but she has LOVED her doll! She named her Isabella and has taken care of her faithfully every day. This is my other favorite thing about Christmas this year - I discovered that I still have a little girl in my house! Kelcie tries so hard to keep up with her big sisters that it's easy to forget that she's really only 8 years old!

And last but not least, after all the presents were unwrapped we suggested that we take one of their new movies into the family room and watch it as a family - nobody was in the mood to watch a movie but Eric and I kept insisting so finally they came wandering in and saw this: