Merry Christmas

Well this will be a very long post to be forewarned but today was a blast. Everything went so well (Thanks Lord!!)

Last night I didn't sleep very well. Must be the kid in me too excited to sleep. Kendra was up once at 3:30am but other than that Micah woke up at 6:45 am.

Since we set up the kitchen last night, Jamie wanted to take him down there. So I got my camera all ready and tried to catch his reaction but the camera didn't focus fast enough and I totally missed it. Oh well. He loved the kitchen. Kendra loves all the little parts with it too!

While Micah was playing with the kitchen Jamie put his new bed up in his room while I prepared the stuffing for the turkey. He seemed to pull it off getting the bed up there without Kendra waking up but he forgot to close the door. So when Micah and I went up there when Kendra woke up at 7:30 am he saw it. Opps! We wanted to wait until later for that one. He was having a blast jumping on it and loves his new bed (especially since he opened a new Thomas the train bedspread from Gammie later).

Jamie took the kids downstairs while I finished with the turkey. I got the 17 lbs turkey in the oven at 8:15 am. It made perfect timing as later this afternoon the power went out for about 2 hours at around 3 pm (we have a fast method for cooking turkeys). We had just finished cooking most of the vegetables and the turkey was just about to be cut. Thank God we had just finished! I feel for all those other people's power that went out and there dinner was still cooking. Anyways, there was lots of daylight but we did eat with candle light for Christmas this year. Took these candle shots to document the event. We had turkey, stuffing with bacon, gravy, squash, green beans for dinner and Grandma's fresh made this morning pumpkin pie with all of Avie's chocolate desserts (including a chocolate pizza and many different cookies).

Christmas morning is always a tradition with the Verrier family to have crossiants, cheese and fruits while we open our gifts. Jamie's parents arrived at the house at 9:15am, we had a quick start to our breakfast and started opening our stockings. Jamie's mom brought all the food for that which was blessing.

Another Verrier tradition is to open all your presents one at a time so that everyone can see your reaction. I really don't mind this tradition except for the fact that in the past it has taken over 5 hours to open presents. There is such a huge volume of presents and this was no exception. This year was better as they decided for everyone to open the whole stocking at once and the next person go. Plus, the kids don't really understand the whole open one present at a time yet! I wish there was some way to open one at a time and not have it take so long. It was shorter this year I think but I know I missed seeing what the kids opened from their grandparents. I guess it's harder now that there are two kids to watch plus open your own presents.

Kendra had a blast trying to get at all the paper. At one point she was climbing into the sea of presents and we had to get her out of there. Many of the grandparents tried to put her presents in bags so she could just pull out some tissue paper. Well Kendra just wanted the paper ones, well the tags specifically. One time, we had given her one present and we started it for her but Grandpa's presents were more interesting as they must have had shiny tags on them. Micah enjoyed trying to help Kendra to open the bags. Kendra got a Care Bear that has a rattle inside (she loved the sounds), a ball tower that makes noises when she puts the ball in the top (it also has rings to pull off), some books, a Blue's Clues video (since she is mimicing Micah with the actions), a duck pull toy, a couple of outfits, a doll, a keyboard that makes sounds and a cheque to put in her education fund (RESP) from Grandma.

Micah loved the whole idea of getting presents but he seemed to be overwhelmed at times with the volume of presents. He would open one and just want to play with it and then it would be time to open another one. I think that next year we should try to space them out a bit more over the day. He would whine and say, "I just want to play with it", when we tried to force him to open the next present. Micah got a steam train that moves on the floor, a nice roots sweatshirt, some pyajamas, a race car track, a race car, a LeapFrog learn the letters toy, Thomas the Train DVDs, Blues Clues and Dora stickers, Madagascar DVD, and as said before the kitchen set and his new bed including all the linens and Thomas bed spread (with nice general pattern on the other side of the duvet).

This year was no excuse for Jamie's interesting wrapping jobs. He decided to cover one of his sisters presents with some of his old drawing paper and then wrap the ring like present with both duct tape and packing tape. He nicely hid all the nastiness with a nice layer of paper ontop. Well needless to say Avril made him open it up with a knife in hand but his mom said, "What goes around comes around!". This year Jamie's mother (Gammie to the kids) had wrapped up 100 loonies individually in a container. He is going to have fun unwrapping that. He said he is going to get Micah to help him with it. Jamie also got Worst Words flip the days calender (Jamie and his mom have dictionary debates of meanings/phonics all the time), a bird feeder and seed (he loves birds and can tell you the specific kind of birds there are around here), he got a puzzle that he had to open to get $20 out of (apparently his mother tried for 45 minutes but it took Jamie 4 minutes and 50 seconds tonight to get it open), some organization stuff for his tool area, a couple of shirts, Gift Certificate to future shop and $50 from my Grandma.

I was totally spoiled this year. I got a Scrapbooks Etc. subscription for a year with the December magazine, some clothes, $50 in $5 for scrappin money, some dollarstore scrappin stuff that Avril found, a thermal gravy boat, four new 256 MB cards for my camera (didn't need that many but dh said he got them for ab0ut 15% of the real price they should be), I got a new camera battery as this one seems to be slowly dieing due to the downloads from the camera (using a card reader now) and $50 from Grandma.

Well it was a busy day and it's so nice to be able to relax now.