Christmas Day 2011!!!!

Christmas Day!
We plan and anticipate for months! I was surprised when I got up at 6:00am and was the first one up! I got up and put the roast in and just enjoyed the silence by the glimmering tiny tree. Dave soon followed. Both parents awake before the kids? Crazy! At almost 7:00 Justin and Emily wandered up the stairs, Mitch followed quickly. Ashley took some convincing, but finally came with the rest.

Santa had arrived!

After all their Santa and parent gifts had been opened there was one more HUGE present for each of them! They gave Justin a little bit of a head start and then they all opened them. Those suitcases were a nightmare to wrap! It took longer to wrap one of those than it did to open every present Christmas morning!

Mickey and Minnie Cups! Disneyland here we come!!!! We surprised the kids with a trip to Disneyland!!! They were all shocked!!(except Ashley-she was in on the surprise). It was going to be a big day-we were leaving the very next day!!! We were also going to Sea World and Universal Studios!

Christmas leftovers! It is always so crazy the mess that comes from unwrapping everything!!

Dave cooked a wonderful Christmas breakfast of French Toast, bacon and orange juice. He was superman!

Christmas happened to fall on Sunday this year! It was lovely to go to church and celebrate the birth of our Savior. The choir presented a wonderful program. I was grateful to be able to sit with my entire family, it is very rare to have Dave and Ashley with us. After the meeting I told the family that I needed "a moment" and they needed to pose for a picture! They are not always too thrilled with that. However, it turned out great!

(The camera never got picked up for the rest of the day--sad)

We had Christmas dinner here at our house. We had the 5 Coffman's, 2 Cox's(Jess and Chris), Janet and David and our 6 Carrigan's. We had a beautiful table set with our Christmas dishes, nice glasses and centerpieces. We had ham, roast, baked potatoes, gravy, raspberry jello and a few other dishes. We had pumpkin and mint pie for dessert.

After we ate we opened presents and visited. It was a very lovely afternoon. After that we hurried and cleaned up those dishes and started packing for our trip! We then started getting ready for the next meal with the Halverson's.

Betsy and her family arrived at 6:00pm for our traditional supper of pulled pork burritos. It was fun to have them all there. We just don't get together enough. After they left-and I sent every single leftover possible with them--we started to make sure we were ready to leave bright and early the next morning.

We ran our dishwasher FIVE times Christmas day! I don't think I ever sat down! Except to eat!

It was a wonderful Christmas day! I am certain that I will never have a trip planned like that ever again, however! It was a bit too busy for me! I want to be able to sit and enjoy the day a little bit more-I guess that I am the Momma now and it goes with the territory!

We are so very blessed! I am so grateful that we get to celebrate Christmas. I hope that we can always remember that "He is the Reason for the Season!"