Santa Claus Really Comed!

I have to say our Christmas Eve nativity hit an all time high this year. We finally have enough grandkids to carry on the tradition that we left behind when we were....in our twenties? Yes, we may have let the dressing up in towels and bathrobes go on a bit too long, but we are suckers for tradition. I have missed doing the Nativity, so I was SO excited to see it resurrected this year. My mom worked hard to make these adorable costumes. Aren't they fantastic!?

An exclusive backstage photo of the actors getting in costume and rehearsing their parts:)

Olivia was the cutest Shepherd EVER. I was so surprised that she was willing to wear that on her head for so long.

Liam (Joseph) loved the attention. Throughout the reading he went around raising his arms repeatedly as if to elicit big applause from the audience...like what athletes sometimes do to get the crowds going.

Amidst some chaos, the kids kept going back to baby Jesus, and circling around. It was really sweet! Liam didn't want to take off his costume, he just kept saying, 'I still wanna be Joseph!' The nativity was followed by Christmas pajamas and the best round of white elephant gifts ever given (with the prize going to the home-made shave me barbie...thanks for that Derek)!

On Christmas morning we were having a hard time waking Liam up at first. We were patting him, and singing Jingle Bells and who knows what else.  He was laying with his legs dangling off the bed and his toes touching the floor...still totally out of it with his eyes closed. Then Dan said, 'Liam, Santa came!' and immediately his body turned stiff as a board and flew into a standing position and he shouted 'Santa came!?' with a look of wild excitement on his face. It was SO hilarious! We should have known we need only mention Santa's name.

He loved running to his stocking and pulling each item out one by one. He got a lot more than a helium balloon this year:) He played with and opened presents, and played some more. It was hard to get him to look at us for a picture, so mostly we just took a million pictures of him playing with his toys.

 If I counted right, I think we had 17 adults and 5 kids surrounding the Christmas tree and filtering out into the hallway. You can imagine the chaos and fun that it was to dive into the massive pile of gifts. 

Later that day we broke the usual tradition of wallowing around in pajamas watching movies, and playing with gadgets and toys. Instead we geared up and took the kids out in the snow. This was Liam's first real experience playing in snow. It was so much fun. We didn't have much snow gear for him, though. You can see the first attempt at gloves didn't go so well. he he:) My dad found yet another magic box in the garage of snow gear from my childhood, and we found Liam a better pair of gloves. Still huge, but better.

Grandma and Grandpa Dahle have a perfect sledding hill for tiny kiddies in their backyard. 

Here is Nyah exerting all of her brute strength to pull Liam and Ali on the sled...very slowly.

Pure joy.

Eric's AWESOME outfit also came from the magic box in the garage. And the grocery bags in his shoes is just classic. He was the one that got the party started by pulling out the sleds and building ramps for the kids. 

My mom was really cute and hopped on for a ride or two.

Although Nyah did a great job pulling the kids, Dan found a little more success in helping Liam catch some air. It was so fun to watch everybody running and playing outside. Liam doesn't get nearly enough of that in the winter.

This Christmas can only be described as epic, and one that will most likely never be repeated in quite the same way. We had every single member of our family together, we had a brother and sister in law that we didn't have the year before, and a brand new (three days) brother in law there to officially complete the family. We already have two more babies due just this year, and who knows how many more in the years to follow. It's going to take a barn to fit us all by the time we meet again:) It was a crazy, but awesome Christmas!