Christmas Day 2013

 At 8:40 A.M. Christmas morning thirteen year old Easton popped his head in our room and asked if we could head down to the family room and see our presents.  I'd say 8:40 was a pretty good sleep-in time for our family.  As a matter of fact, I think that is the latest ever time we have gone down for Christmas morning.  We must be growing up in this house of ours.  We gathered the troupes at the top of the stairs until everyone was ready to go down.  We tried to be quiet in case Santa was still doing some last minute things downstairs.  We quietly headed down and ran to the front door to see if we could catch a glimpse of Santa flying off in the cloudy sky with his sleigh and reindeer.  As usual, I was able to just barely get a peak at him before he zoomed off to the North Pole.  The family room drew us in with it's subtle Christmas music playing and a warm,cozy fire crackling in the fireplace.  Sure enough, Santa had arrived!  Everyone knew theirs spots and quickly began going through their Christmas morning loot.

 Ashton and Brandon's stash

 Winston was visited by Santa too!

 Mom and Dad were left a few treasures.

 Easton scored!

 Landon's Christmas spread.

 An American Eagle hoodie

I know this picture of Landon is blurry but it's the only one I have of him on Christmas morning.

 Charlie is all worn out.

 A shot of the videographer, Stephen

We chuckled about the awesome wrapping job Stephen did on the presents he gave to me. Creative!

Stephen is looking good in his new, yummy yellow sweater!

We ate our traditional Egg Casserole for breakfast around 2:00 in the afternoon and then pretty much zonked for hours from Christmas Eve exhaustion and preparations.  The highlight of the day was being able to Skype with Dallin who is in Brazil on his mission.  He looked great and sounded great!   He was just beaming with excitement and we all had a good time talking and laughing with him.  He struggled with some of his English and choosing words, a true sign that he has embraced Portuguese as his second language.  The 45 minute Skyping session went by so quickly.  I'm sure we could have talked for hours.  We certainly love him and we miss him but continue to be so proud of the hard work he is doing to share the gospel in Brazil and look forward to having him with us next Christmas.

The evening festivities included deli sandwiches and our favorite, Christmas striped jello!  Our day was full of family, fun, magic, yummy food, and a remembrance of our Savior.

Click on this video to hear Dallin sing, Silent Night in Portuguese.  I taped this of the computer screen while we were Skyping with Dallin on Christmas Day so the quality isn't that great.