This year for Christmas we stayed the night on our own, at our own house. We love visiting family for Christmas but we decided that we needed to branch out and create some family traditions of our own and plus its soooo much easier not to have to haul presents everywhere (though we did still have to do that on the way home).
We started the celebrations off by having a nice Christmas Eve dinner. We have had this turkey in our freezer for about a year now (we got it free for buying a ton of groceries last year). Amanda has never cooked a turkey and has been really hesitant to do so. However, it turned out alright (for turkey anyway). We had a bunch of yummy sides to go with it and set the table up really nice. Avery really liked the fancy tablecloth, which was spilled on quite quickly.
Then we read the Christmas Story from the New Testament and watched the Animated Version and a short real video online of the Saviors Birth. We wrapped a baby doll up in "swaddling clothes" and Avery and Lily helped place the paper Nativity scene in its proper place. Overall, we think the kids really got the idea of the true meaning of Christmas.
We promised they could open one present so Avery & Lily opened their presents to one another (they got to pick out a 5$ gift at the store). They thought that was pretty cool. Lily had actually opened hers earlier so it had to be re-wrapped. Then it was off to bed. Avery was so concerned about Santa's cookies and that we put way too much milk in Santa's cup for him. However, they both managed to go to sleep really well.
We, the parents, stayed up waaayyyyy toooo late getting this ready and were a wee bit tired the next morning when Avery came to wake us up. Lily actually woke up first at 6 am but we got her to go back to sleep until Avery came in at 7am, then Lily was really hard to wake back up.
Upon arriving down the stairs to the Christmas excitement (sorry no video for this yet), there were some fun reactions. Lily first went to the tree and wanted to hold the Baby Jesus doll under there (she didn't realize she had presents yet). Avery saw his scooter and pretty much forgot that he had wrapped presents. Lily finally discovered her presents and had more fun unwrapping hers, Avery's, Mom's and Dad's presents to actually care what was in the presents. However, they did discover that they got kitchen sets for Christmas and really liked that.
We (the parents) got a tv and blue-ray player for our room. Brian spent a good portion of the day mounting it to the wall.
The rest of Christmas Day was actually really busy. We thought we would get bored and have nothing to do and possibly drive to Idaho that night. Boy were we wrong! We had to go sledding (it finally snowed the night before) with their new sleds, and play with all their new toys. After the kids went to bed we were tired watching "The Dark Knight Rises" but only made it 20 minutes into the movie before we were both zonked out. It was a splendid Christmas! 
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