We began the Christmas 2008 marathon by heading to my parent's house on Christmas Eve and spent the day hanging out, tobogganing, opening presents, making and eating Christmas dinner, and watching the kids perform the Christmas Nativity. It was pretty sweet watching the kids dress up and act out the Nativity. Alison's kids played Joseph and Mary and rode in on their dog, Trixie.
Next, the angel (Lucy) visited the shepherds (Max) and brought glad tidings. Max came to visit the baby Jesus and gave him a kiss. 
Our wisemen followed after (Emma) and gave the baby a gift. Lucy has been really into the Nativity story this year and has made me retell her the story about 3 times a day for 2 weeks. We have a small Nativity that she plays with and she's taken on the task of telling to story to Grandma's and Grandpa's and whoever else will listen. She has the story so perfectly memorized that she even got upset at me one time when I said "There came a decree from Caesar" and forgot to say "Augustus". 
Once we were finished opening presents we headed out to Tyler's Aunt and Uncle's place for their annual Christmas Eve party. We enjoyed visiting, singing carols, and playing our Christmas gift Exchange game. We ended up back home at about 11:30pm and got the kids straight to bed so we could pull out all the presents.
We are fortunate that our kids are still young enough to be excited about Christmas, but not old enough to wake up at ridiculous hours of the morning to start opening presents. I was able to wake up, shower and get ready before our kids even made a peep. We got Max and took him into Lucy's room to wake her up (she's a sleeper).
They had a Christmas morning hug, and then we headed out to the tree to eat some breakfast and read the Luke 2 Nativity story. Once we all had food in our bellies, we headed for the stockings. Lucy was excited for the Dora DVD and Princess puzzle Santa brought her, and Max was over the moon about the Lightening McQueen and Doc Hudson hot wheels cars he got. 
So excited, in fact, that he refused to put them down and wouldn't open anymore presents. Anytime we tried to suggest that he open another present he would scream and run down the hallway to get away. We ended up opening the majority of his presents for him. Every once in a while he would get distracted by a present, and then quickly head back to his Cars. Here's a shot of him opening another present while still holding the cars. 
I even had to dress him while still holding his cars in each hand. We enjoyed having Christmas morning at our own house this year and were able to slow down and focus on each other, rather than the onslaught of presents. Lucy was pretty excited about her Twin baby girls she got, and tons of play food for her kitchen. 
We spent a few minutes playing and then headed up to Grandma and Papa's to open presents with them. The kids got spoilt and we enjoyed spending the rest of the day up there, opening presents, opening presents, opening presents, and then making dinner and eating. We visited for a while into the evening, and then headed home, exhausted.On boxing day we headed out to a hill in Cochrane and went sledding for a few hours. Max was pretty much frozen, so he didn't much enjoy the trip, except for the first ride down the hill with Dad.
Lucy enjoyed the new snow-tubes we got and went down the hill a number of times. 
We headed back to Grandma and Papa's for Lucy to hit the hot tub and Max to have a nap. We played games all afternoon and then headed up to the church to play volleyball for a while. My parents met up with us there and came back to eat dinner and play games. We introduced them to "Killer Bunnies" and "Pit", two of the many games Sarah bought for her family for Christmas.It was a pretty great time.
We've done a lot since then, but I'll end this post for now and do some more blogger bogging in a while...let you guys catch up a bit, grab a snack and then dive in for some more.
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