Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve at the Rogers began at church for Sacrament meeting, then we went home for some family time.  We made fudge and finished some last minute preparations.  

Then we sat down to a delicious Christmas feast.  I think we were just missing the Who Hash.  

Cheers everyone!  

The kids surprised us by getting up and singing some of their favorite songs that they had been learning in Primary.  It was really sweet.  

While waiting for dinner to be cleaned up so we could move onto Christmas Eve presents, Daxton totally fell asleep.  He has had such a hard time sleeping since we've been here that I didn't have to heart to wake him up.  Okay, that's not entirely true.  I let him sleep through the Nativity, but he couldn't miss out on the jammies so I did wake him up.  It was hard, and not very pleasant.  He was mister grumpy pants!   

But while he was sleeping and peaceful we did out own Nativity.  It's harder to fill the cast rolls with a smaller pool to choose from, but we did all right.  This time McKenzie was able to be Mary, Daxton was the sleeping baby, and the rest of the kids were wisemen.  I was the lone shepherd.  

After a few Christmas carols including Silent Night we moved onto the presents.  Nana and Papa told the kids to close their eyes for their first gift.  It looks like we have varying levels of participation here.  

When they woke up they each found a Warmie in front of them.  They are lavender scented rice bags essentially, and make cuddling in bed so much warmer!  They found them for the kids in Germany.  

The next flurry of excited pictures are when the kids could open their Christmas jammies.  The boys are appropriately decked in the Queen's Guard pj's, and the girls have super cozy ones for the winter nights.  I laughed when I looked through this series of pictures and saw that everyone's hands were a blur because they were opening the gifts so quickly.  

Everyone ready for a warm and cozy night!  

We exchanged the cousins gifts that night because we weren't sure if the King's were going to have time to come over in the morning with all of the chaos.  The boys exchanging their gifts.  Hugs were included.  

Alysha drew/painted pictures of the girls with a few of their favorite things which was really sweet.  Then we put out cookies for Santa and sent the kids to bed.  

The adults decided to stay up partying a little longer.  We pulled out our big kid jammies, and unleashed our inner wild child after we put them on.  

We exchanged sibling gifts too because of the possible time crunch in the morning.  Honestly, it was really nice just doing an adult gift exchange.  The kids weren't running around unwrapping all the gifts at once and we were able to take our time.  I think Jeremy wins the prize for the most creative gifts this year.  I had no idea he was doing it and we scrambled a bit to get it ready.  He put each of the sibling/dad gifts in a gag box.  Dantley received toddler training weights with his Man U cufflinks.  

Brody got the crib dribbler to cut down on those exhausting night time feedings, but really received an air couch.  

And Bruce received a baby's first fire kit (gasoline not included), to go along with his dad jokes socks.  

We were cracking up.  Nice work hun!