Boxing Day

On Boxing Day Monday we packed up and headed northward to Rebecca's house.  Grandma and Grandpa would be there and so would Kathryn and her family.

This is the group of cousins we had in the house!

Crazy bunch of kids!!!

Kenzie and Josh were the cutest - stealing hugs and playing together.

The 6 year olds - Taylor, Katia and Marina.  Nope, these girls didn't have any fun together - none at all!!!

The 10 year olds - Jenna and Savannah.

Jordyn, Olivia and Carlee.  Cousins are so much fun!

And then there's the older bunch - Kathryn, me and Rebecca, with Mom in front.

We left on Wednesday morning because Chelle had to get back to her job.  It was a short visit but lots of fun, as we played games, visited and, as usual, ate way too much.  It's so nice to have those little get-a-ways, especially for the cousins to have lots of playing/bonding time. 

This brings me to my last blog entry for the year 2011 - my first full year recorded in web-log style.  Now to attempt to get it printed into a book!!!

I've enjoyed thinking about things that I delight in over this year because delight was my word for the year, and the name of my blog!  Sometimes it was easy to think of things, sometimes it was a stretch, sometimes I just wanted to delight in the same things over and over.  So over a year of thinking about things that I delight in,  I would have to say that my family and the Gospel of Jesus Christ are the things that I delight most in.

Delightful, eh? 

Christmas Day

I'm not sure why, but I never seem to take many pictures on Christmas Day - probably just too much good stuff going on.  Mackenzie is giving Christmas Day two thumbs up!!!

Munchkin was first to open her stocking.  We all get up at 7:00am and open them together - and of course some of the girls have been up earlier checking things out {I know I always did!} but if they took anything out of their stockings, they sure packed them back up exactly the way Santa did.  Which leads me to believe that they've never actually peeked too far down in their stocking - but they'll tell me the truth some day!

Kenzie took about half an hour - well, maybe not quite, but it sure seemed like a long time when I was so anxious to look in my own stocking!!!  She was so excited about each thing and had to thoroughly examine everything.  She would only dig in for more if we told her to. 

 Little ones at Christmas are the best!!!

Katia got new mittens!!!

Jenna got new hairbands!!!

Carlee got a water bottle!!!

Jordyn in thrilled with a gluten-free cookbook!!!

Jas gets a water bottle too!!!

Chelle and her favourite candy!!!

Mom with her lifeline for the next year - the Polestar Family Calendar!!!

Dad with a King Arthur movie - and battery powered socks there on the chair.  He'll never have cold feet again!!!

After playing around with the stocking stuff for awhile, we open our Gifts From the Savior that are humbly wrapped and laying under our Nativity Tree.

You can read more about these gifts here.

This is one of my favourite parts of Christmas Day.

After this we all worked together to prepare our big Belgian Waffle Breakfast.  Actually, this year Dad did a lot of the work as many of the ladies had to start getting ready for church.  It was delicious as usual!

I enjoyed Christmas on a Sunday this year - it was wonderful to rejoice through music and the spoken word as we celebrated the birth of our Savior. 

The last time Christmas Day fell on a Sunday, we didn't go to church, but instead we were in the hospital with Jordyn who had just been diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes. 

Here we all are after church.  We had 1:00pm church so Christmas morning wasn't rushed.  The girls decided that they wanted to wait until after church to open gifts - mostly because we take hours to open our gifts and they didn't want to stop part way through for a church break!  The girls are always so thoughtful and creative in their gifts to each other - we can't rush through that!

So we opened gifts, and then pigged out again with another meal similar to our Christmas Eve dinner.

I think this year was the earliest we've ever gone to bed on Christmas.  This is what the family room looked like at about 9:00pm . . .

. . . sleeping bodies all over the place!  Christmas can be pretty tiring!

Have I mentioned before that I delight in Christmas?

I really, really do!

Christmas Eve

Our Christmas Eve celebrations always begin with the meal.  I love this meal because we get to eat some special things that we only eat once a year, such as bacon wrapped water chestnuts and wiener wraps {kid's favourite!}, quiches and meatballs, cheeseballs and wraps . . . 

I've noticed that December 24th is the one day of the year that I don't mind being in the kitchen!

So here we sit, ready to indulge!

We put the second leaf in the table and very comfortably fit Gramma and Grampa around the table too.  See the piece of red yarn under the plate in the empty spot?  That's for our little pre-dinner game that we play every year.  We each have a piece of yarn in our spot and we all pull them at the same time.  One piece has a button attached, and the lucky person with the button gets a little gift.  The gift is always something to do with the nativity - like a chocolate bar wrapped in a nativity wrap, etc.  Just a fun little thing to kick off the meal.  This year's winner was . . . drumroll please . . . . Chelle!

After we all stuffed ourselves as much as we could, it was time for the pageant.  We drew papers from a hat to see what part we would be playing.  Then we put on the costumes that the girls had thoughtfully prepared for us.

{The Mary and Joseph parts were previously cast.}

The scene begins with Mary and Joseph on the long walk to Bethlehem on a poor, old, tired donkey.

"Can I be the donkey?"

"Dad is always the donkey!"

"He's a better donkey." 

{Based on Kid History, but a true conversation in our home too!}

Mary and Joseph and baby Jesus.

Mary played her part so seriously, and Joseph was very doting and kind.

And the Angel appeared . . .

. . . to the shepherds, with good tidings of great joy!

And suddenly there was with the angel, a multitude of heavenly hosts, praising God and saying . . .

"Glory to God in the highest, and on Earth peace, goodwill toward men."

{Oops, missed a part - that's the Innkeeper on the left of the couch, and she is also our Narrator.}

The shepherds {with their flock of one!} decided to go with haste and visit the Christ child.

Wisemen from the East . . . .

. . . followed the star and came to worship Him, bringing gifts of . . .

. . . gold, frankincense and myrrh {which strangely resemble a wooden box, candle and Webster's Dictionary!}

{Love the wiseman in the fedora!}

Then it was time to be joyful and triumphant as we . . .

. . . sang Christmas songs.  Each person chose one song so that meant eleven numbers.  Lots of fun because we all love to sing.

Then we played Christmas Bingo and some other Christmas games and stories.

Then it was time for the girls to figure out their secret identities for this year.  Each year we give them a new identity that gets written on the gift tags - that way they have no idea which gifts are theirs until now.  This year's theme was males.  So we gave them a few clues like:

"Chelle is not Tiny Tim or Innkeeper" and

"Jas might be The Grinch or Wiseman #2".

It didn't take these smart girls too long to figure it out.  It was fun to see their charts and listen to their reasoning.

Richelle was The Grinch,  Jasmine was Innkeeper, Jordyn was Joseph,  

Carlee was Micah {the only Prophet who mentioned Bethlehem as the place of the Savior's birth}, Jennafer was Ebenezer Scrooge, Katia was Tiny Tim, and Mackenzie was Wiseman #2.
{Does my underlining help you see how I chose who was who?}

So now that they knew which gifts were theirs, it was time to . . .

. . . open their new pajamas!!!  The oldest five got fleece pajama bottoms and the littlies two got complete outfits. 

Now they're all ready to go off to bed and fall asleep within minutes of their heads hitting their pillows, and dream of sugarplums, til they all wake up at the crack of 8:00am!!!

I delight in traditions!!!  There are so many that we look forward to at Christmas time.  Some seem to stick and we have to do them every year, or it wouldn't seem like Christmas.  Others come and go.  As great as righteous traditions are, we need to be flexible too.  For example, a few years ago, right before Christmas, we learned that Jordyn couldn't have gluten anymore.  Well, there went most of our Christmas Eve dinner!  So we tried something new - a fondue - so Christmas would be different for all of us that year and not just her.  We've since learned how to adapt our regular meal so that she can eat most of it too, but that first year it was a little overwhelming.  I mean, I find so much delight in Bacon Wrapped Water Chestnuts, why would I want to change that tradition!

I feel a song coming on . . . "Tradition".