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Christmas at the Rees House

Our festivities began on Christmas Eve with Davin and me making the traditional Rees family Christmas cookies while Chris made the traditional Rees family Christmas Eve German Dinner. Davin ate more dough than he made into cookies, but we had a great time working on it together. Chris’s dinner was amazing; it gets better every year. After dinner, we had our first family nativity starring Davin as the Wise Man, Rowan as the Shepherd, Chris as Joseph, Katie as Mary, and a rolled up baby blanket as the Baby Jesus. I’m not sure if we’ll ever have a full cast, but maybe we’ll add an angel in there somewhere. We did a very simple version of the story interjected with carols that Davin knows, and the boys seemed to enjoy the moment. I know I did! We put out cookies for Santa and went to bed, hoping that Santa would arrive.

Poor Rowan wasn’t feeling well and was up most of the night, but it didn’t curb our enthusiasm too much the next morning. Davin came into our bed around 7:30am and after taking care of some basic grooming, we made the march down the stairs to our den to check out our stockings. Sure enough, Santa had at least found the stockings because they were filled with fun treats and surprises. Davin kept saying “it’s chocolate!” and we could have stopped there, but we decided to check out the tree in the living room. Santa found the tree as well and had generously filled its skirt with packages. The treasure of having small ones is that they like to savor each gift, exploring it before moving on to the next item. We finally opened our last gifts around 4:00 pm, and it was fun to enjoy each surprise. During our breaks in gift opening, we enjoyed crepes for Christmas breakfast, talking to family on the phone and via web camera, and playing outside on a warm and sunny day (who wants a white Christmas when you have a new bike to play with?).

Thank you to everyone who sent gifts and shared our Christmas Day, even if from a long distance. We love you!

Comments

Anonymous said…
How I miss those mornings of pure excitement! Enjoy and treasure them while they last. The boys look so happy. Thanks for sharing them with us.
December 26, 2008 at 6:33 AM
Maile said…
Well, our Christmas did look a lot like yours in many ways - cookies on Christmas Eve, Santa filling stockings (I love that Davin got golf balls!), and a train set...but we definitely did not have warm weather, a REAL fireplace (!), or a train table (too much room).

I also love the excitement of Christmas with young kids. I was probably more excited than them this year just to see their reactions to their presents. My kids definitely didn't linger as well as yours did until almost all the presents were unwrapped (Asher couldn't help but stop when he opened his train set, and Kaia - my bookworm - stopped when she opened a kids book about "Your Body.")
December 26, 2008 at 6:31 PM
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