Christmas Day

After the LONG night of Christmas eve, Christmas morning came, and with it all the wonder and amazement that our children still blissfully hold!  Our oldest son came into our bedroom and snuggled for a short while until his brothers awoke...then it was time to head downstairs to see what Santa left!

I left a note asking Santa to take a picture with my camera before leaving...just so I could see how beautiful it was!  He kindly obliged...

Santa must have a sense of humor turning the tv on to the Yule log while having a fire burning in the fireplace!  I'm glad he knew how to turn the fireplace off before he left!

Christmas morning we always start with stockings!

While our two older boys know just what to do, our littlest guy hung back and observed for awhile!

Slowly he caught on...(I love all our stockings made lovingly by Grammy HB--Thank you always!)

Then before we can enjoy the presents under the tree, we get to have breakfast!  This year we had the added excitement of Grammie Lowe having a sleepover Christmas Eve!  She enjoyed the fun with us!!

German Pancakes for the boys...

Delicious eggs benedict and hash for the adults...ahhh, homemade food is so good!

After a wonderfully enjoyable breakfast, it was time for the tree!!  The first gifts the boys opened were new nets!!  The Salmon Creek won't know what hit it when the boys come armed with these nets!!

Our oldest son was estatic with the lego sets he received

and the pump scooter!

Our middle son loved the Battleforce five race car

and the hotwheel race tracks!

Our youngest loved his new kitties

and puzzels!

The Big Guy Lowe was pleased with the new race car game he received...

but mostly he is excited about our vacation to Maui that we gave to each other!  YAHOO!!

There were many other gifts given that were wonderful and greatly loved.  It was a good thing Santa knew Grammie Lowe was spending the night so she was able to open her presents too!

Grammy and Grandpa HB came over and shared their fun Christmas with the kids too!

Everyone was so happy with all the wonderful gifts!  Santa brings one gift per person in our home, The Big Guy Lowe and I give one main gift per child, the kids give gifts to everyone and we try to reign the grandparents into giving only three gifts!  With all that, how can we not be thrilled!

Later in the afternoon we all gather together again to enjoy another wonderful meal--more traditional this time!  Unfortunately I wasn't feeling the best this year so we didn't make it a late evening, but enjoyed the time we had.

Family, Food and Faith provide wonderful opportunities to share our love for one another.

Merry Christmas.

Oh Gingerbread!

What can I say about gingerbread?  From as far back as I can remember, gingerbread has been a huge part of Christmas for me and my family.  I believe kindergarten was the first year my family made the delectable house-shaped treats as thankyou Christmas gifts for teachers at school and church as well as for friends and neighbors.  Through the years we went through many different blue prints to find the best shaped house for kids to decorate and families to enjoy.  There were even a few years that we ventured away from houses and tried gingerbread trees and sleighs.  While those were also fun, they just didn't stand the test of time.  Gingerbread houses, for our family, are a huge tradition that I now joyfully carry on from my own home!

Most years, the Thanksgiving turkey has barely left it's perch on the dining room table when discussion of Gingerbread baking begins.  I'm always excited for that day as, to me, it signifies the beginning of celebrating Christmas!  The past few years have been especially fun, because we get to do the majority of the baking at my home.  When we moved into our current house, we ripped out all of the kitchen appliances--the single oven was replaced with Dacor double convection ovens!  Oh the joy!!!  Because of this beauty of an appliance, we are able to bake six gingerbread dough houses at once.  It really cuts down on all the baking prep time, so we can generally complete all our baking in one day.  While my house may be a mess of flour, molasses, oil and spices, the aroma that is a part of our home is well worth the clean-up involved!  In addition to the wonderful smells of gingerbread, I get to spend the whole day with my mom.  That in itself makes me happy. 

I love being able to carry on a tradition in my home that she so creatively began in her home when she was a younger mother than I am now.  She has worked so hard to help each of her children (me included) know that Christmas is first about celebrating the birth of our Savior, Jesus Christ; everything else needs to stem from that one truth.   How does making gingerbread houses branch off from this most important point?  We make the houses to share our love and gratitude for those around us.  We rarely keep more than one house for our own, even though we make dozens.  We give these candy-covered cookie gifts created with our time, hands, love and imagination so we can tell people thank you.

Okay, enough talk, on to the houses!

Once the baking has been completed, these are the pieces we begin to put together.  Royal icing is our glue of choice because it gets as hard as rock when it dries...that always makes transporting to their new homes so much safer!!

Before and after.

These are a few of our creations this year.

We are strong believers in having the kids decorate the houses they will give to their teachers.  The first year our oldest began decorating houses for his teachers, it was a real test for me to step back from my symetrical self and allow him to create as his imagination lead him.  Now it's just fun to see what they think of next.  Me, yep, I'm still hooked on symetry when I decorate!

While we have gingerbread houses to decorate at our own home, we always start out by decorating one with Grammy (and often cousins too) at her house.  It always makes my heart happy to see my kids loving time with grammy and grandpa.

We love Christmas!  We love the reason we celebrate Christmas, we love the ways we celebrate Christmas, and we love the people with which we get to celebrate Christmas! 

Merry Christmas, to everyone!