CHRISTMAS!!!!

Christmas Eve was a little different this year. In years past, we have a Christmas Eve dinner at Cuckoo's house and open gifts with her, and then Casey & I take the kids to the Festival of Lights in Spanish Fork. This year, Marshall had family coming into town so Noelle asked if we could change Christmas with Cuckoo to be on Christmas day. This was fine, the only draw back for me, was that now I had to cook Christmas Eve dinner! I don't love to cook at all! I guess I don't like the whole production when I know my kids won't eat half of it, but the dinner ended up being great. I cooked my first prime rib and it turned out delicious, (granted, we bought it preseasoned). After dinner we drove out to visit grandma & grandpa Hansen and there we let the kids open their annual Christmas eve jammies. Now Cy is convinced the jammies are from them and not us. I told him they were from mommy & daddy and he keeps arguing with me saying that grandpa got them for him. It is pretty funny. We then drove to Festival of Lights and of course the kids loved it. On the way home it was snowing, and the car was warm and outside was beautiful, and it was just cozy and nice. We got home around 9:30pm and the kids went right to bed, except for Hadlie who was wired for a while and crawling around the Christmas tree being hilarious. At about 1am Santa had come and mom & dad were lucky enough to see him leave. After he left, mom & dad went and sat in the hot tub. Casey decked out the deck. I didn't mean to pun there, but it just worked out that way, ha ha! He put Christmas lights all around the deck and in the small trees, so it was beautiful sitting in the hot tub, with the Christmas lights on and the snow falling..... until, a little face was looking out the back door... RYLLIE! GET BACK TO BED! I jumped out and followed her back to bed. "Did you see that Santa already came?" I asked. "Yes" she smiled excitedly. "Did you see him?" she asks. "I sure did, just as he was leaving. We heard something in our room and came out just as he left, we were so excited we decided to sit in the hot tub." I know, I know, what in the world was I telling her, but hey it worked, okay? I told her she needed to go back to sleep, and that we couldn't open the gifts till the morning. She went right back to sleep. After the excitement the next morning, Maddux also revealed that she had gotten up sometime in the night to go to the bathroom and saw all the gifts too. Sneaky little girls. Christmas morning is always fun, and Casey let me open my gift first, a new camcorder! So I have footage, but I haven't figured out how to work everything and how to attack video to my blog, so when I figure that out maybe I'll put some clips up, in the meantime, here are some pictures. Family favorite gift= Polar Express Train.