Christmas Comes But Once a Year

Christmas has come and gone! Here is the photo essay:

What the first picture really SHOULD be is a snapshot of how beautiful the snow looked falling down early on Christmas Eve evening. It would have been picture perfect.

Instead what we have is a visual of our first ever attempt at a family Christmas Pageant. Here are the kids in probably the only 2 seconds they kept their "costumes" on before they started running around the room (literally) while Scott read the Christmas story from the Book of Luke.

After Family Home Evening and dinner and making cookies for Santa, we let the kids open their Christmas jammies and their new ornament for this year's tree.

This could be my favorite ornament EVER that I've given to Scott. I wanted to try and find something that represented this year but couldn't find anything that worked. Since this summer's internship with Procter & Gamble pretty much was the main event of the year, I wanted to represent it somehow. So, I bought a plain chipboard bulb ornament at Michael's and bought myself some decoupage glue. I went through old magazines and ripped out any P&G products I could find and thus adorned the ornament. I lacquered them on, followed it up with a coat of varnish, and Voila!

After the kids went to sleep, I decided to make my first ever attempt at homemade cinnamon rolls for Christmas morning. I found a recipe entitled "Best Cinnamon Rolls" in my new MBASA cookbook and gave it a whirl and they really were the best!

I rolled them out the night before and let them rise in the fridge overnight

(In case you're wondering about the single cinnamon roll without cream cheese frosting it is because Ethan is rather fastidious and does not like to be sticky and informed me that I COULD NOT put frosting on one for him because he does not like it)

Here are the kids with their loot:

Sophie was actually HILARIOUS this morning. She was so excited surrounded by all the presents that she was literally bouncing up and down and trying to lunge after everything!

And here is my loot:

My Pink Christmas gift!

I love it! I can't wait to find the perfect place to put it in our new place when we move next summer. Thank you Harmony, so much!

For those of you who are wondering what it was that I made for my Pink Christmas gift, here it is:

And for those of you who are wondering what "Pink Christmas" is, you really should check out this link! I have to admit, I was a bit intimidated to try it last year, but I'm so glad I decided to join in this year. Especially for such a great cause. It was an awesome experience.


Finally, here we are at the end of the day. Ethan and Grace are wearing their paper crowns from the "crackers" their Aunt Kristin sent from England, while eating cereal for dinner (after deciding they didn't like the Gumbo Scott and I had been working on all afternoon). What a good mom am I.

It has been a LONG day. I am finally feeling the repercussions of too many late nights and early mornings, and I've got a raging head cold. So, if this post is a bit lackluster, I apologize! I'll try to bring my "A" game next time. Hahaha.

Merry Christmas to all and to all a goodnight!