A Wilson Christmas

Christmas Eve and Christmas Day were a lot of fun in our house. After attending the family Christmas Eve service at our church where Amelia and John sang with their respective choirs, we came home and had a nice dinner with Laura's family and my parents. Ten people around our dinner table, including four children under the age of nine, made for a lot of fun energy! Scott spent 24 hours preparing delicious pulled pork and smoked brisket and my mom worked hard to prepare delicious side dishes to match. Needless to say we were all well fed and happy that evening!

Later that night before the children went to bed, they went to the front room to put out cookies and treats and Santa and his reindeer. Below Amelia and John are admiring the tree with grandpop.And then they set out cookies for Santa...
YUM! This is the way our front living room looked after Santa had visited. Amelia's (unwrapped!) gifts from Santa are on the left and John's are on the right. From Santa Amelia received three board games (Headbandz, American Trivia Junior edition, and a logic game), a sewing kit, and two paperback novels. From Santa John received a new bike, a Lego City police station kit, a remote-controlled helicopter and a Lego Star Wars book. The wrapped gifts under the tree were for the adults, for Amelia and John from mom and dad and family, and all of Jack and Henry's gifts.

The kids went to bed well and I wasn't awakened until 5:10 a.m. when Amelia lightly tapped me on my shoulder (as I was slumbering comfortably in bed) and announced happily, "Mommy! Santa came!" Amelia was so happy to share this with me and she had the most beautiful smile on her face. And all I could think was, "This child is such a GOOD sleeper, so WHY ON EARTH is she up this early?!?"

Despite my attempts at getting Amelia to go back to sleep we were both up for good by 6:00 a.m. Eventually the others all joined us by 8:30 a.m. We waited to open gifts until Laura's family arrived around 10:00 a.m. and then the fun began. Below everone is in the front room ready to go.

Amelia, John, and Jack patiently took turns opening gifts one by one. Henry was not at all interested in the gifts, but eventually Laura convinced him to try and pull the paper off of one of the packages.

And then the adults put a bow on Henry's head as decoration because it was just so.darn.cute.Sweet Henry didn't care a bit. He just toddled around our house all morning long like the happiest little guy in the world.

John and Amelia loved their new bathrobes from Aunt Laura's family!

And Jack and grandma spent a lot of time together opening Jack's many dinosaur-related Christmas gifts. It was so cute - after he opened each present Jack exclaimed, "Wow, grandma! A dinosaur _______ ! I am so happy!" (fill in the blank: book, puzzle, game, etc.).

After the gifts were opened the adults enjoyed the annual breakfast of champions. In addition to our traditional fresh fruit salad, chocolate chip coffee cake, and champagne, we stepped things up a bit this year by adding some protein - sausage and cheese mini muffins. Delicious!

The older boys enjoyed their coffee cake breakfast before spending many hours playing with their new toys.

I am so grateful that my sister and her family and my parents chose to celebrate Christmas with us this year in Dallas. It was super fun to have all 10 of us together creating wonderful Christmas memories!