CHRISTMAS DAY

Merry Christmas to everyone! We had a great day with only one moment of feeling like I was going to lose it because we are so far away from family and friends...We do have so many good friends here and were able to share today with alot of them and we look forward to having a good time with many more tomorrow as we host a sort of open house here. So here is a glimpse of our day:
Hannah and Jacob woke up at about 750am, Alexander at 815am, and we finally woke Benjamin up at 830am! Aren't we fortunate parents?? How many of you were up before 5am this morning?
Anyhow, we opened our socks, which were a big hit with all the children, they were quite content with their contents even if they didn't get other gifts....we did give them other gifts anyway!
We had a lovely breakfast at about 945am, had birthday cake, read the Christmas story,and sang happy birthday to Jesus at about 1015am, and then we had some friends come over around 11am to watch all the children open their gifts. It did make it seem more like Christmas at home with other people here for the children to "show off" their gifts to. They all loved their gifts and received many new toys to play for many days to come.
We had some outdoor play time, weather was a little overcast and about 4 degrees, played with the many new toys (Bingo and air hockey seem to be favorites so far), had a little supper/lunch and then the boys and I had a little sleepover (we watched a movie on our bed) after I put Hannah and Jacob to bed. All in all, a great day.

THE STOCKINGS

One of the biggest "hits" of the day were the new toothbrushes everyone got in their stockings. A and B got battery operated spinning Veggie Tales ones and H and J got ones with flashing lights on them. They must have brushed their teeth at least a dozen times in a couple hours.

THE GRUB

The gifts....
The "mural" behind the gifts was done by the children (with help from Dad of course). We are going to have the children who stop by for the open house make sheep tomorrow with cotton balls and glue to paste on the countryside. I'm not sure if you can see the little stars they have already pasted on and the big star which is over the nativity scene in the corner. Just wanted them to remember that the nativity scene and the angels, shepherds, etc were all important as they saw all the great gifts they received. Oh, and Benjamin is holding up the beater which he was licking from the whipped cream which was on Jesus' birthday cake! It was Yummy!!




Some good ol' American football on Christmas day. As close as we get to the NFL with no TV here. Actually, I am watching the scores on NFL.com now as I type this!!

And as I forgot to take our chicken out of the freezer until this morning, we did not have our Christmas dinner today, we will save that for tomorrow, so no pictures of a nice dinner for this post. So here is how we ended our day, Shawn was out doing dishes (what a guy!) and I was in laying on the bed with the boys watching Bob the Builder. Merry Christmas to me!

So we would love to hear how your Christmas day has gone. We miss our friends and family back home and we are very thankful for the many blessings God has given us here in Scotland.