Merry Christmas everyone! I hope that all of you had a wonderful day with people you love.

We had a great Christmas Eve and Christmas Day...tiring, but great!

We have had countless people say over the past few weeks that they would love to be a “fly on the wall” during Christmas at our house, so here is the Reader’s Digest version of things. :)

We started with church on Sunday morning, where all of my kids except for Marcus and Belane sang in the Christmas program. We came home and had lunch, and then the kids watched some Christmas movies while Josh and I secluded ourselves in a bedroom and started some of the wrapping.

After an early dinner we played our Christmas Eve games and let the kids give the gifts that they bought for each other, and then after some family reading it was off to bed! We got all of the kids to bed by 8 (Christmas miracle number one!) except for Belane, who went right after she got her meds at 8:30 p.m.

Josh and I did lots of wrapping, building and stocking stuffing, and got to bed by 1 a.m., which isn’t as bad as I expected. We told the kids that 6:30 a.m. was the EARLIEST they could get up, and that we didn’t want to hear a sound before that…amazingly, they all complied. However, at 6:30 on the nose there was a thunderous stampede of kids running up the stairs.

We told them that they had to come right into our bedroom to wait until everyone had been to the bathroom and was ready to go in to the living room together, which we all did about 10 minutes later.

After lots of oohing and aahing (presents under the tree for 10 kids is an impressive site!) Josh and Marcus gave out the stockings, and once those were emptied, we went on to the presents. We do presents one at a time, and this year we went youngest to oldest, which made Marcus first.

Belane got into the swing of things very quickly, and totally knew that she was after Marcus, so as soon as Marcus got a present she got all wiggley and excited. They kids were all very excited, but managed to contain themselves pretty well, which made it really nice.

I was really happy with their “stuff” too. I didn’t feel like we had piles of junk or that we had gone overboard, but everyone had plenty too. Between family members and what we bought, everyone got three or four toys that they wanted, a few smaller things like hats and gloves and two pairs of pajamas. They also got a wonderful selection of family games and arts and crafts, which we have already started enjoying and will definitely continue to enjoy over the vacation this week.

Josh’s big surprise gift from me was two tickets to the Denver Broncos game on New Year’s Eve, so he will be going on a road trip with a buddy next weekend. If anyone deserves a fun little getaway, it’s Josh. (and by the way, I got a beautiful silver and Black Hills gold heart necklace.)

Everyone got bathed and showered, and they made a group decision to wear pajamas all day, so after getting clean, everyone put on some new pajamas (Josh and I included). We got things pretty cleaned up and put away by noon, and then we had our buffet lunch.

We put Marcus and Belane down for a much needed nap, and the big kids split up into two groups to watch two of their new movies for quiet time.

Our friends came over at 4 (they have five kids, so we had 15 kids total!) Josh made two delicious hams and three pies, and Bethany made some au gratin potatoes, stuffed mushrooms and a veggie tray to go with it. We all ate way too much but had lots of fun visiting, running around and playing games.

Both families had some very tired kids by 8 p.m., so they all went to bed nice and early.

It was a lovely day…the kids were wonderful. Not counting the two year old, who acted his age on several occasions, we had no meltdowns or fighting…everyone was thrilled with what they got and did a great job sharing and playing together. I think Ben wins the award for the most hyper (which is SO unlike him!), and he was pretty dismayed when he was going to bed last night and asked how many days it was until the next Christmas and I had to say 365.

It really was a lovely holiday. We did miss seeing family, but hopefully we’ll get to see some of them soon.

So today we are taking things slow. This week we’ll be going to the movies at some point (our small town movie theater only has one movie a week and this week it is Happy Feet, so we plan on going). We’ll also play games, play outside and enjoy a week of little obligations and plans. Marvelous!

I hope you all had a lovely holiday. I’ll be back to blogging tomorrow. :)