This year our parish had their children's mass on Christmas morning. I knew that my children would not do well attending the 9 am mass on Christmas day. My dear friends have an annual tradition of throwing a cookie party after the children's 5:30 pm mass on Christmas Eve. As you can imagine, everything was thrown out of whack. However, we all did well in adjusting. Our friends still had their party on Christmas Eve and we all attended midnight mass.
Here are the children wearing their Christmas best before the party.
All the kids fell asleep before the beautiful carol service before mass. We arrived back home at 1:30 am and put the children to bed, but not before Pumpkin decided to throw a huge, roll-around-on-the-floor fit because I pulled her sweater off before she was ready. My husband and I stayed up finishing up the cleaning and setting the gifts out.
At around 8 am, we woke up to open the gifts. Here are the kids in front of our fully decorated Christmas tree. We had some problems with our tree during the transition from an Advent tree to a Christmas tree (it fell over). You can tell by the gaps in the branches about halfway down.
My family arrived in the afternoon and we had our second round of gift opening. My brother-in-law surprised my sister with a double oven gas range. He gave her a gag gift of some pretty ugly sweaters. My sister, gracious as ever, thanked him and mentally promised to wear them even though she really did not like them. Then after all the gifts were opened, he took her to my garage and showed her the range. It was quite lovely to watch.
This is one of my favorite gifts that arrived from relatives.
Can you guess which baseball team my husband's relatives root for? Dawn should know.
We had a lovely dinner with all the trimmings. All in all, it was a wonderful day. I was amazed at my calm state throughout the day. I can only attribute it to the prayers and preparation mentally and spiritually throughout the season of Advent. Things went wrong, but I was able to deal with them without much fuss. Thank you, God. For everything.
Here's to a very Merry Christmas, everyone.
What a merry Christmas you all had!! Love the sweater, too! I don't see much pink around here, but I know just what those little red socks mean. ;)
Posted by: Dawn | December 30, 2006 at 05:03 AM
That does sounds like a great day! My sister is in Boston and our little Texans have a ton of Red Sox stuff too. That was funny. I've been lurking here for a while - and I must say, your family is gorgeous!
Posted by: Jennifer | December 30, 2006 at 07:16 AM
Your children are beautiful, KC. Merry Christmas & a blessed New Year to you all.
Posted by: Margaret in Minnesota | January 03, 2007 at 04:40 AM