Three Christmases--not Four.

So--this year we happened to have three Christmases. I think we had more fun than the movie Four Christmases. Adeline hasn't grasped the calendar yet and Emerson is only 18 months, so we can pretty much tell them whatever we want about the days and holidays and they believe us!
So, we made Christmas Eve Christmas at our house! The night before, we read Adeline the real Christmas story out of the Bible...actually found a child-friendly, easy to understand version online after we started reading out of the Bible and realized she wasn't grasping any of it! Adeline sprinkled the reindeer food on the lawn and put out cookies and soy milk for Santa. We also put a small dish of syrup with little bits of candy cane in it for our "Elf on the Shelf" who she named Buddy (think of the movie Elf with Will Ferrel in it).
We opened presents the next morning...had some breakfast..let the girls play with their toys for a little bit....and then packed up the girls and took off for Houston. We had decided to try to make the 4:00 Children's mass service at a church down the street from Josh's parents house. We got to the church at 3:30 thinking that would be plenty early...boy were we wrong! We had to park on the grass and stand behind the pews of the church where we couldn't really see anything. Then as the service got started, we quickly realized it wasn't really geared towards children. Adeline liked listening to the bells, but Emerson wasn't really enjoying any of it. In previous years the children's mass has been very different. So, we either got the time wrong or they just changed it! So--we left at about 4:30 and decided God would forgive us.
Then the next morning (Christmas day) we opened presents at Josh's parents house with his sister and her partner. We all had fun and ate a yummy lunch. Afterwards, while Emerson slept at home with Grandma and Grandpa, we took Adeline to see the new Chipmunk movie. I had never heard of going to the movies on Christmas Day until I became a member of the Merritt family. I think it's a great tradition! It gets you out of the house when everything else is closed. FYI...Adeline loved the Chipmunk movie, but Josh and I didn't care for it at all! But we suffered through for her. I now have Beyonce's Single Ladies song on my Ipod for when Adeline requests the chipmunk song. LOL.
The next day, we went over the my parents' house for the Staples family Christmas. I have a big family that has a mish-mash of people in it! The adults played a kind of white elephant gift game where one of the hot presents was a book about poop (brought by Josh). Then we let the kids tear into their presents. I never know who gives what present to Adeline and Emerson because the present opening goes so fast over there. We did have four less kids there this time because some of them were sick and couldn't come...but it was still chaotic! Even with the four kids missing that were sick we still had six kids there.
All in all we had a good time at our Christmases...the girls ended up with some nice gifts and I didn't have to buy more storage for all their stuff!