Merry Christmas to All!

I just loved Christmas this year. I love my kid's matching Christmas PJs too.

FYI- In the picture Davis has his hand on his new cowboy gun (it goes with his new boots, cowboy hat and vest/chaps outfit his aunt custom sewed him :) and Leah has her tiara on (it goes with a princess costume she asked Santa for).

Sometimes I struggle with the commercialization of Christmas and I fear we're turning ourselves, and our children, into greedy little hoarders. This year I think we successfully gave our children presents but didn't spoil them rotten... it's a balancing act of the toughest proportions.

We spent Christmas here in Las Vegas but my kids did get to see Papa Bryan and
Meema as they stopped and stayed with us on their drive up to Idaho. My kids love them and were sad to see them go! Leah was also sad to see Dirt McGirt, our cat, go. My sister loves me a lot and agreed to house our cat so he hitched a ride up to cold country with my parents. Thank you guys, that helps a ton!!!

Ok, back to the festivities. All of Jeff's brothers and his sister were in town so the Leavitt house was bursting at the seams! The Leavitt Christmas traditions start on Christmas Eve when we eat homemade potato & cheese soup in bread bowls with homemade oatmeal muffins, we do a little white elephant gift exchange, have the children act out the nativity and then we play a game called Skittles. I've often made fun of this game because you use a sting to spin a top and knock down "bowling pins" to score points. It's a great game but the entire thing is made out of wood! I think my children can just picture the elves whittling this game in Santa's workshop :) Even though it's probably the only game not made out of plastic and/or cardboard in the last quarter of a century it's SUPER fun!!! And Jeff's brother Tyson got a perfect score!! Go Tyson! Christmas Eve was quite the success :)

On Christmas morning Gray woke up at 5am! And so Jeff and I got out of bed to wait until the older kids woke up which is usually pretty early. We were being loud and kept checking on them but they slept until about 7:45am- which is late for my kids! We opened presents and the kids loved every one! Then we went over to Jeff's Grammy's house (she just turned 80 a few weeks ago!) and ate waffles with whipped cream and strawberries. Most of Jeff's family that lives here in Vegas came and there were 40 people total!! It was great! One of the highlights was when Grammy related the story of when she was a little girl and they couldn't afford to buy a tree, so her parents would wait until Christmas Eve when the trees were free. The kids would go to bed without a tree and wake up with a decorated tree with presents under it. I thought that was a special insight into her childhood. We left there and headed straight over to Grandma Cindy's for more presents! There were 20 people opening presents! It was a blast. Okay, my fingers are officially tired of typing :) The end.