Words About Christmas 2010

We took pictures on Christmas, of course, but I honestly just don't feel like messing with uploading them now! :) So, instead, here is an attempted brief recap of the best Wilson Christmas yet!

-Christmas Eve Day: Eric's dad, stepmom, and younger sister came to visit us. We went out to lunch, exchanged presents, and just had fun talking and laughing together.

-Christmas Eve Afternoon/Evening: I cooked for the evening's dinner while Eli and Eric played. We visited our neighbors, made a cake for Baby Jesus, and opened the drawer on the advent calendar that had the Baby Jesus piece in it. We all got Christmas pajamas, and, after reading the Christmas story, singing happy birthday to Jesus, and eating cake, we tucked a very excited little boy into bed for the night. (He woke up FIVE times during the night because he was so excited!)

-Christmas Eve Later-Evening: Phil and Kelly came over for our annual Christmas Eve fancy steak dinner. The food and drinks were AMAZING, if we do say so ourselves, and we so enjoyed this time with each other! We said goodbye late in the evening with very full bellies and very full hearts! I cleaned the kitchen while Eric put together Eli's big Christmas gift from us- a tractor! We put out the gifts and soaked up the candlelit view of the tree. We fell into bed late but still couldn't sleep because we were just so happy and excited!

-Christmas Morning: Eric and I read the Christmas story together before Eli woke up and spent time reflecting on Jesus' birth. (And I will again highly recommend Walter Wangerin's Preparing for Jesus- an amazing, life-changing book on advent!) Then we paced the hallway outside Eli's room because we couldn't wait for him to wake up! :) I finally couldn't help myself any longer and woke him up at 8:30am. He was so excited to see his tractor! It's a big John Deere pedal tractor that has a front-loader and a wagon and everything is pretty realistic. He loves all his other (small) gifts, too, but the tractor definitely took the cake! We opened our gifts together and ate cinnamon rolls and were so very thankful to be just the three of us in our little warm house. We couldn't have been more happy or thankful!

-Later Christmas Morning: We headed over to my parents' house with everyone else for the big Bergstrom Christmas. It was so much fun, and the kids were all so happy and well-behaved! We had a blast exchanging gifts and watching the kids play, and we ended it all with a big brunch, complete with my mom's traditional raisin bread.

-Christmas Afternoon: We napped and rested and played with new toys! Perfection!

-Christmas Evening: We went to my Uncle and Aunt's house for the big family get-together with all the cousins, etc. It was a blast, as usual.

-The 26th: We spent the day with Eric's mom and stepdad and had another wonderful day celebrating.

It was a fantastic Christmas! After several years of spending Christmas day running from one get-together to another, we determined that we were done with exhausting, stressful Christmases! We wanted a calm, restful day with plenty of time with just the three of us, and we got just that. And by doing it this way we got to spend great quality time with each of the "sets" of family we have, spread out over a few days instead of packed into one day. It was a perfect, special, wonderful holiday that we'll never forget.

Thanks for reading! :)