Christmas Day!

On Christmas morning we slept in (Crazy, I know!!) and had a leisurely morning of acting out the Christmas story with the Little People ® Nativity as we usually do, opening presents, having brunch, playing, and watching the Christmas movie the STAR, and having a steak dinner!  Here is a record of our day in pictures!

In their stockings, the kids got money for Bran (to support their Compassion child they asked for last year for Christmas), their experience gift (Man Camp with Daddy at Trout Lake Camp in May and Girls weekend for the girls), money, and glow in the dark light-up accessories for family dance party on New Year's Eve :)

Larkyn made us a plate with our family on it!

Colton made us a box of conversation starters for family meals!

Summer made us an ornament and a pin art.

We don't usually have kids buy for parents, but I guess when Colton was out shopping for his sisters with Paul, he found these earrings and wanted to get them for me!  I love them!

Larkyn got construction paper and markers from GeeGee Obermayer!

Summer got a giant roll of paper and markers from GeeGee Obermayer!

Colton got "road tape" (masking tape that looks like a road that you can lay out on the floor and drive cars on) and an electric pencil sharpener that he wanted from GeeGee Obermayer!

From us, the kids got four gifts: 1) Lava Lamps...

2) A craft (making puffy stickers for Larkyn and making shrinky-dink keychains for Colton and shrinky-dink jewelry for Summer)....

3) playdough....

  and 4) a gift to encourage their spiritual growth....

Larkyn got a pink unicorn Bible cover and Bible tabs.  She was SO excited!

Colton got Adventures in Odyssey CD's....

And Summer got a concordance for her Bible that she has been wanting!

 The kids also shopped for each other with their own money and had so much fun picking out gifts for each other!  I absolutely loved watching their faces as they opened each others gifts, and watched each other open gifts from them!  Pure joy!  They also made each other various cards, drawings, and "tickets" for them to get/do things that they know they love!  So Sweet!

Summer got Larkyn a book about the movie Frozen

Summer got Colton a Lion King sweatshirt!

Colton got Larkyn a stuffed Olaf!  

Larkyn got Colton a remote control car and a little stuffed dog

The older two laughed and laughed when Colton realized that on the word search he made for summer, he forgot to put in the "extra" letters around the words to find!  

Colton picked out doll accessories for Summer

Larkyn got Summer a sequin journal and a cat blanket

Colton made Daddy a scavenger hunt with a caribou card at the end :)

Then we had lots of playtime!  The kids spent the afternoon doing crafts and playing with the things they opened.

Summer made several shrinky-dink jewelry items....here is a ring she colored "shrinking" in the toaster oven.

Colton's shrinky-dink monster truck key chain

Larkyn's penguin

Family Brunch!

LOVING the conversation starters colton made and these answers books for kids that we got at Christmas on the Kirkwood side (blog post to come).  The books have questions kids might ask about the Bible, God, angels, demons, dinosaurs, etc etc, we talk about the question as a family, and then we read the answers as found in verses in the Bible and as described in kid-language by author Ken Ham.  The kids request to read these at meal time and they generate great conversation!

Summer spent a LONG time reading her concordance and looking things up.  She loved finding out the meanings behind names in the Bible and learning how to use the Hebrew and Greek Lexicon to find out what the words meant.  It amazes me that at 9 years old she gets SO into this stuff!  I love it!

Colton loved making road tape roads and driving his remote control car around!

Summer lovin' her giant roll of paper and fresh new markers!

We finished the night off with steak dinner and watching the movie The Star, a super cute (and funny!) movie about the first Christmas morning from the perspective of the animals.

It was literally the most perfect family day and my favorite parts were watching the kids be so excited about giving and so grateful for what they received and just being all together as a family!

No words can describe how grateful I am for Jesus choosing to leave perfect heaven and come to sinful, painful earth, being born in a humble stable and living life without a home, serving and giving continually even up to his life, so that we could one day live a life with Him with no more pain.  I am especially grateful for his gift of HOPE this Christmas.