Christmas report

Our Christmas Eve and Christmas were sweet and simple.
Last week the boys and I made and delivered 19 loaves of the Christmas braided bread I make every year (and I still have 5 more I need to make and deliver!), and I got all of our Christmas cards addressed, stamped, and mailed off, so I was pretty busy.  Ben and I finished up our Christmas shopping on Tuesday night.  Christmas Eve morning I took Mosey to a couple of stores to finish up his shopping for his brothers, and Ben took Brigham and Joseph on a hunt for the perfect present for Mosey.  It took them 3 stores and about 2 hours, but they got it!
I made my last 5 loaves of bread, and we all went to deliver them, and then to HEB for our annual shepherds dinner shopping.  I love doing this!  It had been raining all afternoon and got pretty cold, so it was feeling very wintry and festive.
At home, Ben made dinner and I helped the boys get all of their presents wrapped.  Ben made chicken caesar salad and warmed up rolls and we drank egg nog and Martinellis, and then we began our Christmas program.
The boys all played a couple of Christmas songs on the piano, and I played a few on my violin.

 Mosey played "Oh Come All Ye Faithful" which he'd been working on all month.

 

Joseph played "Gesu Bambino" (his recital song), and "Stars Were Gleaming" from the Children's song book.

 Brigham played "Go Tell it On the Mountain" (his recital song), and "Picture a Christmas" from the Children's song book.

 Ben played a medley of carols from the hymn book.

 Brigham and Mosey listened very reverently, as you can see.

At least Mister was attentive.

I played "O Come, O Come Immanuel," "O Little Town of Bethlehem," and "O Holy Night."

Then it was time for our Nativity pageant.  We have not done this in the past.  I've read the Christmas story from the bible, we've done a little play using figures from our nativity scene, and even done a puppet show.  But I really wanted to act it out in a real pageant like I did when I was a kid.  I didn't think the boys would go for it, but I decided to do it anyway.  I even bought a couple of extra bathrobes so we'd have the right costumes.
I was so surprised and really happy about how it went.  The boys were so excited to get dressed up and act in the scenes.  I played Mary, Ben was Joseph, and the boys were shepherds, an angel, and the wisemen in different scenes.  The boys were reverent and serious, and when it was over, they wanted to do it again!  Joseph told me he wanted to do more plays like this.  I was so pleased.  I didn't want to interrupt the flow of the play by taking pictures, so I only got pictures at the end, when the boys were dressed up as wise men.  Next year I'll have to take pictures of them in their shepherds costumes, too.  They looked great!

 Me and Ben as Mary and Joseph.  I'm sure Joseph wore robes just like that.  :-)

Mary and the three wise men carrying their gifts.  We discovered that using belts to keep the turbans on, as well as the shepherds' head coverings worked great.  

Brigham the wise man.
Then the boys donned their PJ's, and we had our dance party!  (You know, just to wire them up a little *more* before bed...)

This is the same song that I posted a video for last year.  We did listen to other songs, but it's fun to watch this one, and then the one from last year.


Finally, bed time came.  We thought they could all sleep in the same room, which they frequently do anyway, and which I always did growing up.  I have many fond memories of whispering excitedly with my sisters late into the night, being unable to sleep for anticipation, and then waking up well before dawn, and counting down the hours (it seemed!) until my dad would come and get us out of our room.  However, the boys' evening was not so idyllic.  They hadn't been in their room for 5 minutes before fighting broke out.  I don't even know what it was about.  Someone wouldn't lay still, or was making weird noises, or something like that.  We talked to them and tried to work it out, but soon it became clear that they could not stay in the same room.  I was pretty annoyed.  Could they not get along for ONE night, on Christmas Eve??  Apparently not.  So they separated rooms, and then all was quiet.  They were instructed not to make a sound or come out of their room until 8:00.  Then they could start singing Christmas songs and we'd get up.
Then Ben and I began the massive present-wrapping project.  Again, I thought that one of the big reasons parents may want to encourage Santa belief, is that it gets them out of wrapping lots of presents!  :-)  I did the majority of my shopping via Amazon this year, so I had a gigantic pile of boxes and packaging stacked up against the wall in my room by the time we were done.
I also discovered a very effective method of torture for perfectionists like myself.  Force me to watch Ben wrap presents, and very soon I'll be begging for mercy.  Is is agonizing to watch.  Ben's parents did an absolutely wonderful job in raising Ben in so many ways, but boy did they ever fail in leaving Ben with any kind of present-wrapping skills at all.  :-)  I'll leave the details to your imagination, but I will say that he used *at least* twice as much paper as he needed to for each present, and he used up an *entire* roll of tape for about 4 presents.  I kept wondering if he was doing it on purpose, but he really wasn't!  I finally told him it was too painful for me, and I needed to finish the present-wrapping myself.  :-)
We finished everything up around 2:00 AM, and then went to sleep.
8:00 came very soon, and we heard a rousing rendition of "Jingle Bells" coming from upstairs.  We made the boys wait even long while we got dressed.  This year, we set out the presents in the play room to keep our living room a little less cluttered, and also so the boys couldn't peek over the balcony and see everything (not that there was too much to see since almost everything was wrapped).  Before we gave them the go-ahead to come down, Ben started off the morning excitement by playing several Christmas carols on our biggest Christmas surprise:

An organ!!  Ben found this absolutely wonderful organ on Craigslist for an incredible steal.  Like, much less than 1/10 of what it would have cost to buy a similar used organ from a dealer.

We let the boys open a couple of presents each before eating breakfast (one of my braided breads and the sugar-cereal of the kids' choice-- Brigham got Cinnamon Toast Crunch, Joseph got Chocolate Pocketinis, and Mosey got Fruity Pebbles).

Then it was time for present-opening in earnest.  Here were some of the highlights:
Joseph and Mosey both got new bikes (Brigham already had a new one).
Mosey got a leopard gecko!  This was the present Brigham and Joseph shopped for on Christmas Eve with Ben.  It turns out that Spots (the one we already had) is a girl!  So the boys decided they wanted to get a male to keep her company.  He's a good looking little dude, which the boys named T-rex.
Brigham got new blocks (yes, more).  They are architectural blocks with columns and arches and things.
Joseph and Brigham got the Power of Three Warriors series, and Joseph finished the first book in 2 days.
Mosey got his remote control tarantula, which I was tempted not to buy after his shenanigans at Target, but I did anyway, and he loves it.
My mom got us a set of handbells, and I gave each of the boys a recorder, so along with the organ, we've had lots of music (or at least noise) in our house recently.
All 3 boys got a new Nerf Marauders sword.  We've already had an injury and near-fist-fight because of them.  Ahh, the peaceful life of boys.
Binoculars!  We got them each a pair of really nice binoculars.  They're really nice and they better not break them.
Joseph got Brigham a matchbox car and a giant sparkly bouncy ball.  He got Mosey the gecko as well as 2 cool matchbox cars.  He got me lotion.
Brigham got Joseph a blue sea dragon that will go well with their other knights and dragons, and went in with Joseph for the gecko.  He got me a new calendar.
Mosey got Joseph a Hexbug remote control inchworm, which Joseph has really had fun with and which I really, really hope does not break, and got Brigham a giant box of Junior Mints, a set of mechanical pencils, and white-out.  He got me 2 toothbrushes.
The boys got Ben new cologne and a canister filled with dried fruit and nuts that he can take to work for snacks.
There were lots of other really nice things, as well.  The boys have lots of thank you notes to write now.  :-)

 Joseph sitting amidst the Christmas chaos.
After present-opening, Ben went to take a nap, and the boys got started building their giant Christmas tree city.

When Ben woke up, he joined in the fun.

 Mosey played with his Tarantula, harnessing it to pull a train with soldiers around the "city."

 Chrissy hid behind the Christmas tree, a little confused at all the activity.

Finally, it was time to get our shepherds dinner ready.  We turned off all the lights, except for a few Christmas twinkle lights, candles, and the fire in our fireplace.  We had our usual dried fruit, nuts, cheese, flat bread, roasted lamb (did shepherds eat lamb??), and fruit juices.  I made a pear tart for dessert, although Joseph protested that real shepherds did not eat pear tarts.  I figured they were a lot more likely to eat pear tart than the dried papaya in our fruit bowl.  :-)

 Brigham donned his shepherd's costume to really get into the spirit.

Mosey and Joseph were total pyromaniacs.  Ben and I had to keep yelling at them to keep the burning sticks *in* the fireplace, and not to carry them around.  Joseph made an incredible mess playing with candle wax.  He got melted candle wax all over the table, which, when it dried, was really hard to get off!  (Thanks for getting it all off, Ben!)
And finally, it was time for bed.  Another Christmas, over!!