Christmas

Thomas and I love the Clint Black Christmas album. I legit love every song on the album (Looking for Christmas) and we listen to it every  year. It has a good mix of song types and I personally believe it is criminally underrated. One of the songs is called Slow as Christmas and has the lyrics: Every Christmas day makes every other day seem long; And what seemed would never get here; Has so quickly come and gone.

That is how I am feeling today, December 31st. I can't believe another Christmas has come and gone. I spend all year looking forward to December. Thomas and I take two weeks off from work, the kids are off from school and it is a quiet, reflective, fun, relaxing, time. 

So, what have we done? Of course, theme parks. But, they are usually too crowded for us to go the weeks of Christmas and New Years. Kim and her family and Kevin came over on New Years Eve. We did a white elephant exchange and had a good time. We haven't been to see my dad yet (well, I saw him, but the whole family will go down there soon to deliver his Christmas gifts). We went to see the first Harry Potter in the theaters. We've watched movies and played games. Yesterday, we went to Fort Christmas and Steak n Shake. There was last minute shopping and holiday baking. We also upgraded our phones. It's been a really nice break. I'm glad it is not quite over. 

Christmas Day was nice. I thank Alecia every year for giving us the idea of having our big meal on Christmas Eve and then taking it easy on Christmas Day. I do make a breakfast casserole, but that's it. I basically take close to a week off from cooking. 

Christmas Eve

Christmas Morning

I was happy our teens still wanted to get up early. Anna pushed for 6, everyone else was good with a later start, and we settled on 630. We are an open gifts one at a time family. I didn't realize that wasn't how everyone did it, but that's always been our method. I like to see what everyone gets and what they think. We try and make things relatively equal, both in amount and money, but we aren't crazy rigid about it. However, this year, I thought we had actually done it and gotten all the kids the exact same number of gifts. But, somehow some people still had presents when others were out. It's not a big deal to anyone, I don't think the kids care, but to me it is always funny how it works out. I think the number and what we spend is a little above average (at least according to my impromptu Google Search right now) but it's nothing crazy and we don't really do gifts otherwise. Even for birthdays, we are more of an experience family. All that to say, we enjoy buying gifts for Christmas and seeing reactions. 

Everyone was happy with what they received. I got some fun surprises this year. Thomas got us tickets to go hang out with goats, which we did on Monday. And, Kara got us tickets to see Legally Blonde in April. So, my Christmas won't be over for a few more months. 

To end, some pictures from our goat experience.

The Goat Whisperer