This year we decided to invite the young missionaries as well as our senior missionary couple over for Christmas Dinner and our program. It was such a wonderful evening and I couldn't have imagined a better way to share it then to have our awesome missionaries with us. They even stayed to participate in our Nativity program. It literally took me ALL day (8am to 6pm with 1 hour break to shower and get ready) to cook. The meal: Glazed Spiral Ham, Mashed Potatoes, Sweet Potatoes, Deviled Eggs, Peas, Homemade Rolls, Jello, Sparkling Cider, and Apple Pie and Chocolate Mousse Pie for dessert. I also made cinnamon rolls for Christmas morning which is our Christmas morning tradition. Mike claims it was the best meal I have ever made and I have to admit it was the first time doing such a big dinner by myself that I was happy doing it the entire time. I had a happy heart and it felt good. This year I decided to show Emma how to make the Apple Pie my mother taught me my first Christmas as a new wife. Emma made it ALL while I supervised with the exception of cutting the apples. She mixed the dough, rolled out the dough, I helped her transfer it to the pie dish, she filled it, I put on the top, she pinched the sides, and I cut the remainder off for her. She did a great job and had so much fun doing it. I was pleasantly surprised to see how much she had learned from cooking in school with her class. She has been really fortunate to be in a Kindergarten/First Grade classroom where we have the best parent volunteers who come in to teach the kids how to cook and bake. All of the kids enjoyed cutting out the sugar cookie dough to make cookies for Santa. I was a little smarter this year and had them do this in the middle of the day so we wouldn't be overwhelmed in doing it right before bed (we ended up decorating the cookies right before bed). Some of the kids got a little carried away in making the gingerbread people look anatomically correct (thank you Abby). In Abby's words, "Look mommy, she has a chest."
Our Nativity program was really fun this year as we had the two young missionaries participate and be two of the wisemen. We took our program from lds.org and it included songs in between the narration which we all really liked. Afterwards each of the kids got to open their one present of new Christmas pajamas. They let me take one quick picture in front of the tree, we said family prayer, quickly decorated and set out our sugar cookies, read "The Night Before Christmas," and tucked everyone in bed. It was all no stress which is just the way I was hoping it would be. Everyone went to bed surprisingly fast!
(photos above taken at the beginning of the month after pulling out the costumes)
