On the morning of Christmas Eve, Sean's sister Michelle and her family came over to our house.
We all made homemade donuts together.
When Sean was a kid, his family did this every year on Christmas Eve morning.
This is the first time we've ever done it with our kids.
It was a lot of fun.
Sean made the dough and was in charge of frying the donuts.
Justin and Parker were the cutters. They cut and formed the donuts.
Michelle helped supervise the shakers.
The kids were in charge of shaking the donuts.
We had three different flavors- powder sugar, regular sugar and cinnamon sugar.
(It's was hard to get a good picture of the shakers.)
My Father-in-Law was Quality Control.
The little kids lost interest in shaking pretty quickly so they left to go play.
We took a group picture before Michelle and Justin's family left.
Lexi followed Santa on Google.
And she read about the different countries he was visiting in her atlas.
We had a delicious dinner that night. We had ham and funeral potatoes and rolls and lots and lots of sparkling cider for everyone. And we ate by candle light.
The lighting was really bad so the picture is out of focus but I still love it.
These two were being so cute together after dinner.
The tins in front of the tree are the containers for our gifts to Christ this year.
Sean read from the scriptures and the kids helped him tell the nativity story.
Then after the kids were all dressed and ready for bed, they got to open one gift each.
They opened their sibling present.
They each drew a name and that's the sibling they bought a gift for.
Lexi and Avery had to earn the money for their gifts.
They did odd jobs around the house to earn enough money.
Lexi earned $15 and I think Avery earned $11.
They were so excited to give their gifts.
Eli got Ruby Frozen slippers. She LOVED them! She didn't taken them off to go to bed.
Avery bought Eli a garage truck. Which he LOVED!
He actually had been asking for a "stinky garage truck."
He kept saying, "I really wanted that! Thank you Avery!"
He was so grateful.
Lexi got Avery a My Little Pony train set.
Avery was so excited.
And Ruby (with Avery's help) got Lexi a watch and some nail polish.
Lexi was so happy!
The sibling gift exchange was probably my favorite part about Christmas this year.
My kids were all so excited to give their gives and so grateful for what they received.
I was so proud of them. It was such a special night.
Here's our tree all ready for the kids on Christmas morning.
Christmas was on a Sunday this year.
When the kids woke up we got them all ready for church.
When everyone was up and ready for church we headed downstairs.
I had told the kids that they could have their Santa presents and stockings before church.
But we decided to let everyone open one more present before church.
Everyone got a Nerf gun. And we got over 400 new darts.
We had a war right before church.
It was crazy but fun.
And we learned that it would be wise to buy everyone safety goggles.
The kids were so excited to go home from church and open presents.
I tried to take lots of pictures with my real camera but also tried to just enjoy the moment.
Every year we give our kids each a ream of paper. It's become a silly family tradition.
Ruby got a ton of new books.
Sean must be getting old because he actually was excited to get Tupperware.
After we opened presents, my in-laws left to go to Michelle's house.
But first we took a group picture.
Christmas day we got around 14 inches of snow. Maybe more.
Sean had to dig his parents out of our driveway.
After that we video chatted with my parents so they could see us open our presents from them.
We were so blessed with another great Christmas!
The kids loved playing outside while Sean shoveled.
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