They ended up letting us sleep in until 7:30am, and then Lincoln still wasn't up, so both Stephen and I got showers before opening presents. Eventually Lincoln woke up, and then the fun began! Since we're so far from all family members, we had received tons of packages filled with presents, and the kids had been looking at them for days, wondering what was inside.
We got several new games for Christmas--Jungle Speed, Chinese Checkers and UNO Attack (or as we call it, Salad Shooter UNO). We've played all of them--it's fun to have new games! Our other numerous gift item was books. All in all the kids got at least 2 dozen new books--that's my kind of Christmas! We've read (or started to read) almost all of them. The kids' big-ticket items were:
Elise: Friendship Bracelet book
Mason: 2 sorter boxes for his electric components
Sammy: A gigantic shoe horn
Lincoln: A bouncy ball
Trevor: Um...I didn't wrap anything. :) But he did get warm milk!
Sammy was pretty taken with his books...we're big Graeme Base fans here!
My (incredibly talented) sister-in-law Jen made the kids hats, and my mom subtly (like a freight train) reminded us that we belong at Oregon State by fitting out the entire crew with OSU paraphernalia.
Celebrating Christmas on the Sabbath was wonderful! We only had an hour-long church meeting, and it was full of music and the scriptures. Then back home to make Christmas dinner. It was really fun because we had the missionaries serving in our ward over for dinner. Their names are Trevor and Jeff, and they are the closest thing we have to family way out here. :o) They skyped with their families when dinner was done.
It was a wonderful Christmas--the only thing that would have made it better was spending time with family. I was so stinking homesick! I've called my mother every day for at least a week and a half. Sometimes twice. Oh well, we won't always be so far apart!
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