Everyday With Emily: Christmas 2011

We had a wonderful Christmas! We spent Christmas Eve day doing last minute preparations for Christmas day. Late in the afternoon, we went to a friend's house to visit for awhile.

Then we headed to church for the Christmas Eve service. After church we came home to get ready for Santa's visit. Emily had to get Santa's milk and cookies ready. I put the milk in a measuring cup so it would be easier for her to pour on her own. She insisted that Santa should have chocolate milk this year.

She also drew a picture for Santa and wrapped it in a box so that Santa would have a gift to open. What a sweet girl!

Because we don't have a chimney, we leave a key for Santa in a special box on the front porch. Next we had to take care of the reindeer.

She was running around the front yard sprinkling her magic reindeer food:)

Then it was time to get ready for bed. Emily wore her new pajamas that Twinkle, our Elf on the shelf brought her, and then Jeff read "Twas The Night Before Christmas" to Emily has he does each Christmas Eve.

Then she checked the stockings before going to bed.

She was so nervous about falling asleep so Santa could come and I was too but to my surprise, she fell right asleep. Santa was able to come a little earlier than he expected. In the past, Santa has always put her Christmas toys under the tree unwrapped. This year she asked Santa to wrap them so he did except for her stocking stuff.

Because Christmas was on a Sunday Jeff had to work. Our church had one service at 11am but he had to be there around 9am so we had to wake up in time to open the Santa stuff and have breakfast. Emily was still sound asleep at 7am so I got up and turned on Christmas lights and music and made a little noise and then I ran back to bed so she could come in and wake us up. She found her stocking first.

Then she ran to the living room to see what Santa left under the tree.

After she opened her Santa gifts we had breakfast and then Jeff had to leave for work. My dad and his wife came over a little later in the morning. When Jeff got home around 12:30pm we opened some gifts and then had Christmas lunch.

After lunch we finished opening presents and then we had dessert. I made two cakes that my grandmother and sometimes my grandfather made every year. One is a coconut cake and the other is a chocolate cake that we called candy cake. These cakes always tasted great but they were always ugly. My dad says that the original name of the candy cake was the ugly cake but it was renamed candy cake because it's icing is hard like candy. Anyway, we used the coconut cake as Jesus' birthday cake this year.

Later in the day we were able to skype the grandparents who couldn't be with us for Christmas which was great.

Here is a look at the gifts from Santa and family and friends. Emily didn't have a big gift this year on her list. Her Santa list consisted of: Olivia house, dancing baby, dog in a bag, and bath tub crayons. She got everything on her list and more. I bet Santa wishes her list would always be this easy:)

Emily was very sad when the gifts were all unwrapped. We kept talking to her about being thankful for what she had and then she asked for us to re wrap some of her gifts so she could open them again. We realized that she wasn't wanting more gifts necessarily but she really likes to unwrap the gifts. She said, "I got all the toys I wanted and more." She was happy but didn't want the unwrapping to stop:) She also kept checking her stocking all day. One time she found something she missed so then she checked more often hoping she had forgotten something else:)

Here is a picture of her today with her Dancing Baby. This baby is adorable.