Christmas 2023

Posted by Chandra December 25, 2022

Christmas 2023

True to the spirit of the season thus far, Christmas weekend was stupendous. How wonderful was it to have Christmas on a Sunday this year??? On Saturday, we spent the morning cleaning up and make the house nice for a lovely turkey dinner with my parents. When they arrived, the kids quickly swooped them up and showed them all over the house while I finished up dinner (lunch) preparations. My mom read Christmas stories to the kids while I added the last touches to the meal and it was the best seeing them all cuddled up together. Since we prioritized reading Harry Potter this month, we didn't read too many Christmas books. So I was so glad when my mom sat down with them to read. It was so sweet.

Dinner turned out amazing and we all enjoyed it. We opened our Christmas Crackers which were a huge hit (Thanks Bluey!). Dessert was all kinds of ice cream and before we knew it, it was time to say goodbye and get ready for Santa!

We did all of the things: we left reindeer food in the lawn, ready Luke 2 and watched the church's nativity video, we left out milk and Oreos for Santa and wrote him notes, we said goodbye to Happy (this was a BIG deal) and you'd better believe it was difficult getting the kids to sleep. We put up wrapping paper at the top of the stairs to prevent any sneak peeks but Rayleigh admitted that she woke up early and tired to see Santa.

Christmas morning didn't come too early and it was a bright, beautiful, warm day! Santa filled everyone's stockings, ate the cookies, and brought the kids a blow up tent and a trampoline! He left a little white dog that can walk with a leash and some Beats Earbuds for Parker. Everyone was so happy. We had a quick breakfast and got ready for church. Tanner and I sang a song together with our small choir and I sang another song with just the women. Both were so pretty and really invited the spirit into the meeting. Everyone was so friendly and kind and I was so happy we could attend church on Christmas.

After church, everyone was eager to open the rest of the gifts under the tree. It was mostly good but Tanner was upset that we were going too fast and not taking turns. We can't always meet everyone expectations. I asked Tanner to get me Ugg boots for our trip up north and a mini backpack for Disneyland and he ended up getting me a full size designer backpack from Michael Kors (which I did not need or want or even life) I should have just said thank you and secretly returned it... but I didn't and I hurt Tanner's feelings. I think gift giving is one of his love languages but it's definitely not mine. Fail. But the kids were happy and I think everyone won't remember what they did or didn't get, anyway.

Tanner and I needed a little space from each other after that so I busied myself with getting everyone packed for our roadtrip while Tanner built the trampoline with the kids. But remember, it was 80 degrees on Christmas Day! After the trampoline was complete, the kids jumped for hours and we all enjoyed the swimming in the warmed up pool and hot tub.

The sky was filled with so many stars and if I could, I'd name each one and send a prayer of gratitude for this Christmas season and all of the wonderful ways we've felt the spirit.

It was a very merry Christmas.