Happy Birthday Jesus

We started the morning by emptying the stockings.  Yes, I bought some $1 candy and stuff to fill up the house even more.  We don't fill the house with the idea of Santa but we do hang stockings by the fireplace and fill them up on Christmas Eve and the kids empty them on Christmas morning.  Generally its candy, gum and pencils, which is mostly what it was this year.

Anika and all her gum that she now can't have because of braces - oops mom!

Then we have coffee cake with candles in it and we all sing Happy Birthday to Jesus.  Coffee cake doesn't last long at our house. I believe this was gone in around an hour!

We spent some time painting ornaments - each kid paints an ornament each year - and then we headed off to our friends on the lake for a delicious prime rib dinner.  Not everyone can say they played on the beach on Christmas afternoon!  We played a rousing game of Settlers of Cataan that lasted close to three hours - it was crazy long, but everyone stuck it out.

This is one of the last pictures ever taken of Mollie our beloved dog of our friends.  The owner sat down at Christmas lunch and announced that 20 kids were going to have a great dog to play with soon.  He was referring to the kids from the shooting in CT and Mollie.  Mollie was diagnosed with cancer a few months ago and was quickly fading.  She died about 12 hours after this picture was taken.  We all said goodbye before we left which is always hard to do.

We ended our evening in Grand Rapids with my aunt.  We went ice skating, along with a whole lot of other people - but we fully enjoyed it. We also enjoyed a small recital by the kids back at their house as well as soup and some games.

It was a lovely Christmas spent with some wonderful people making some great memories.