Christmas 2012

Christmas Eve

Briana in her Christmas Best!

Blake, Lex and Daddy playing Talking Tom!

Presents!

Santa Blakey!

Christmas Jammies!

Setting out cookies for "Santa"

As is tradition on the Wilson side of the family, we all got together and spent the evening with Aunts, Uncles, Cousins, Grandparents and Great-Grandparents!  We all had fun opening gifts and spending good quality time together!  Once we got home the kiddos opened their Christmas jammies and set out cookies and milk for "Santa"

We are very honest with our kids about "Santa".  They know the story of St. Nicholas who dedicated his life and considerable inheritance to helping those in need, among other things.  They know that when we pretend with "Santa" we are teaching them valuable lessons about sharing the joy we have because of Jesus.  We are happy and we want to share that with others, just like St. Nicholas did, and he was following Jesus' example.

That being said, we do have a lot of fun with the Santa Claus idea, we still do the milk and cookies, we still meet Santa once a year (starting last year) although Briana does not meet Santa yet because she has stranger anxiety.  :)

So we hung the stockings and set out the cookies.  We read the kids a Christmas bedtime story and head to bed!

Christmas Day

Where are the cookies?

Stockings!

Presents!

Breakfast at Village Inn

We love that they love each other so much!

Christmas morning the kids were very excited to see what was in their stockings and open their presents.  They each picked out presents for each other and were all very excited to give their gifts to each other!  Once we all opened our gifts we headed to Village Inn to meet up with Mama Corinne, Papa Mark and Great Mama Donna!  Breakfast was delicious and we had a great time!  Our server was wonderful!  We headed over to Great Grandma's house for a little while, then went home to nap and enjoy the rest of Christmas day there!