Santa Picture

Well, We she did well last year so naturally this is what we go this year. In all fairness it was at the end of the Ward party and past her bed time but....I find it kinda funny (other than the entire gym turning to look at the screaming child)

Christmas Time

The Saturday before Christmas we drove down to Utah and went to a concert with my parents. Doesn't that make us sound like cool concert people. Wait for it- The Piano Guys! hee hee, ok maybe not the hippest but it was great music and lots of fun!!!

Joe's parents came to us for Thanksgiving which meant we were free to head to Utah for Christmas :) I love spending Christmas with my family. Traditions are really important to me, like stupidly so. I think it is because I generally don't handle change well and moving around the world pretty much involves a lot of change, ha ha. But there were some traditions that we ALWAYS had, no matter what and they are really special to me. (Although now that we are in the US we no longer to pizza and Swensens on either Christmas eve or day, and there is no swimming on Christmas) I have always loved the way that we do Christmas because it is the way we have always done Christmas but as I have gotten older I have seen so much wisdom in it because it keeps things more Christ centered.

One thing that we get to do that is fun when we are with the Cole family is put up our ornament. We each have one and put them up in the order we joined the family (birth or marriage). We used to do take the time to put up EVERYONE's ornaments but the family has gotten SO big and since we have littles now we really only have time to do the people actually in attendance.

On Christmas Eve we always act out the nativity (costumes and all)- we were always told we would only be exempt from this once we produced our replacements (Michelle does a pretty good job, but she isn't old enough to dig in a poinsettia yet sooo.... we'll see). When we are in Utah it's a big Cole family shabang at my Aunt Allison's house that also involves skyping with an Aunt and Uncle who were born on Christmas Eve. Because we were away from our Cole family most of my growing up years the way we do the nativity has evolved to something a little different but both ways are great (when we were growing up moving around we had no Uncle Keith to play piano for us and ....we always had plenty of "outtakes").
This year Michelle was an angel, Joe played the role of the other Heavenly hosts.

 Well You see, I fell from Heaven ;)

Too bad the kids were done by this point!

Then of course there is the special Christmas Eve surprise gift. :)

And that is Christmas Eve ( Mom and I of course made our pumpkin pies earlier in the day, this year we made 4!)

Christmas morning growing up we would all gather as a family (at a previously appointed "no earlier than" time) in Mom & Dad's room and say family prayer. Can I just say what a great tradition this is? If you don't do this I might suggest adopting this into your traditions. It reminds the entire family why you are celebrating in the first place and brings the spirit into your home- I'm sure that this helped eliminate many of the potential conflicts that arise with 6 kids on Christmas morning.  Then Papa would go downstairs and make sure the lights were on on the tree and that all the magic had occurred :) Now that we are grown ups we still try and have prayer but we don't all pile into Mommy & Papa's room in our PJs ha ha
Then it was of course, stocking time! Our stockings always waited on the stairs and they were big! I'm sure if Mom had known how many years of filling those times 6 would ensue they would have been smaller! hee hee

Then presents: we do this differently from a lot of people. We go one gift at a time. The youngest child gets to pick a present for someone else, they open it, thank whomever and then the next oldest picks and so on and so forth. Why I love this. It becomes more about the giving than the getting and it gives each person and present time that is special. Even though my gifts to my siblings weren't always the best I still felt like I had done a good thing in giving, maybe except for the year I wrapped a troll doll in toilet paper and gave it to Robyn but decided I didn't really want to give it away and then she called me an Indian giver... (beware people, I remember a lot of weird things...).

Then we do Christmas breakfast. Waffles (because I don't like pancakes), bacon, eggs, chocolate milk. Those are the staples, other things come and go. And yes siblings, I thinned out the chocolate milk like we were always supposed to unless we were drinking lactaid and didn't have to which made the boys so mad ha ha ha (I told you I remember weird things).

Then the kids play, people get ready and then in the afternoon we have Christmas dinner, yummy yummy yummy. Olive plate and all (which this year we forgot to do because they were sick kids and we were flustered- so mom got it out for me another day :)

 She reminds us of the little girl from despicable me in this cute hat

Followed by pie once you can eat it!

That is how we do Christmas :)

Then the rest of our break there are very few pictures because we all got sick. It was super fun. Michelle is still sick and I still have a cough.
But we did have our traditional New Years Eve- Super cool

 See How tall I am?

right........

In other news. Joe started his new calling on Sunday. Primary Chorister. Can anyone guess what I have been doing the last few days? Apparently it went well. I wouldn't know, I was home with a sick Michelle :( I think we might all be better by Sunday.... I hope. These coughs are stupido!