Green Family Happenings: Christmas Eve and Christmas Day

I love Christmas time even though it seems like the hardest time emotionally for me! I love spending time with family most of all! Every Christmas Eve we get together with my parents and siblings and read Christmas stories including the story of the Nativity told in Luke 2, my brother sings while my Sister in law Annalee plays the violin, and we open one present (pajamas). It is the highlight of the Christmas season for me. This year my mom even had goodies for us and a nice warm bowl of chili!! Yum!

My mom and my nieces, Sydnee and Karlee listening to a story.

Mark singing and Annalee playing the violin

Niece Karlee dancing and singing. She is SOOO CUTE!!

My dad reading a wonderful Christmas poem that his Stake President wrote.

All the kiddies in their pajamas by the Christmas tree.

Mark, Annalee, Karlee, and Sydnee

Roy, Stacie, Kelvin, Aaron, Jessica, & Samantha

Me, Kent, Austin, Benjamin, & Cameron

For the last couple of years we have been able to sleep in a little bit before our kids finally woke up to see what Santa has brought. We normally have to wake Cameron up and we have a hard time getting him to be interested in opening his presents. This year was A LOT different. Our little Cameron decided that he would get up at 4:00 in the morning. He came and woke Kent and I up and told us that Santa had come and wanted to open his presents. We told him to go back to bed and we would get him up in a couple of hours. Well at 4:45 (yep, 45 minutes later) he was back in our room wanting to open his presents. We decided to get the other boys up and have our Christmas morning (since we knew we would probably be woken up every half hour if we didn't). As soon as the boys were playing with their toys, Kent and I went back to bed and told them not to kill each other. We got up a couple of hours later and went on with our day.

We have kind of made it a tradition to spend the morning with Kent's family having breakfast and enjoying being together and then we have Christmas dinner with my family. It was really nice this year. We had a nice breakfast at Kent's mom's house. His sisters came with their families and we had a lot of fun visiting with them. In the afternoon we left for my parents. We had a nice dinner and then did our annual, going around in a circle opening presents, tradition. I LOVE IT!! It's so nice to see what everyone gets.

It was a very nice Christmas. I'm glad all the stress that comes with Christmas is over and I'm looking forward to a New Year. Hoping that its A LOT better than 2010 was!

Christmas Morning - bright and early!