"The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel"--which means, "God with us."

Only a few hours left of Christmas day and I always get just a little sad about this time. We have to wait a WHOLE YEAR before Christmas again.

We had a great Christmas weekend. Friday night, we had a nice spur of the moment Christmas dinner with some friend's at their house. The kids played hard, we had a nice dinner and visit, played some cards, etc...

Saturday, we did a little cleaning around the house, and then my parents arrived. And from there on out, we didn't do too much. A lot of just lounging around, playing with boys, eating, etc...

Grandma taught Andrew how to play Domino's (although he kept calling it Diamonds). It was a great way to work on his numbers and colors as well as a chance to BEAT GRANDMA!

We all went to church on Sunday and on Christmas Eve, we had some friends over along with my parents for Christmas Eve dinner. We ate roast beast and put the kids down before attempting to play Cranium. Of course, before Andrew went to bed, we put out milk and cookies for Santa. We also got to open an early gift. We all got new PJ's and pretty much stayed in them all Christmas day.

AJ in his new PJ's and daddy's boats, I mean boots.

Christmas morning (bright and early), Andrew came into our room almost bursting to tell me that the COOKIES WERE GONE!! I don't even think he noticed the gifts under the tree... but the cookies were GONE!! So we all slowly made our way to the tree, after some coffee, to read the Christmas Story from "The Book for Children" Bible (I highly recommend this children's Bible. It's complete and accurate, yet appropriate for little ones. Andrew LOVES it! And the stories refer to each other and explain themselves).

Then we started opening gifts. Gifts were a little tricky in that the boys wanted to open and play with each gift as it was unwrapped,and seeing as each toy is more secure than Fort Knox, this was going to be too much. So we then enlisted a rule where we would unwrap the gifts, then set them aside until we were done unwrapping all the gifts, then we would start opening the toys. Andrew was 'ok' with this. AJ did not get it... at all... and we had the bend the rule occasionally. But it was still a great time!

AJ really "got it" this year. He was opening presents with the best of us.

I don't think Andrew 'stopped' the entire day. And with no nap, that kid should sleep well tonight!

We received a personalized cornhole game from my parents... complete with Viking corn bags. The boys love it!

The boys received lots of toys and all of them save one that I can think of off the top of my head is a plane, train, or automobile. Truly boy toys. I got spoiled with another Beaner's, I mean Biggby's, gift card & a spa gift card from my hubby. My parents got me these adorable train cookie cutters that I will probably be using tomorrow.

Rabbit Trail: You see, I made all these Christmas cookies about a week ago, but kept giving them away. Marc was, um... getting 'concerned' that there would be none left for Christmas. I assured him that there would be plenty, I made gobs, and told him not to worry. But, yet, I kept giving them away and sure enough, come Christmas... the cookies were gone. My mom even brought a few up and we had to ration them so there would be enough to leave for Santa. So, I just finished making sugar cookie dough and it's in the fridge ready to be rolled and cut into little engines and cabooses tomorrow.

We ate leftovers for lunch and had a "Happy Birthday, Jesus" cake for dessert.

Andrew got to pick out the flavor for Jesus' cake. At first he had a chocolate cake with chocolate icing. Then... he saw the white cake with SPRINKLES! That trumped the chocolate cake.

The rest of the day was more lounging around, eating, napping, playing, etc... This evening was an easy dinner of pancakes.

Andrew eating pancake on his new Lightning McQueen plate and new Lightning McQueen placemat. It makes everything taste better. (Think it will work on broccoli?)

And like I said, I never got out of my PJ's today. That's a good Christmas.