The Keene Family

Christmas Eve included the same routine we always have: dinner at home, church, and new pajamas. Then we watched the "new" Pixar version of the Grinch while we ate our usual homemade apple pie. Haley and JT look forward to new pajamas every year. I teased them that they were likely getting too old, and they protested heartily! Christmas Day we woke up around seven and opened stockings and gifts at home. We had a light breakfast of orange scones and berry bowls too. Then the kids snuggled in with Jim to watch some of A Wonderful Life while I made the egg-veggie casseroles for brunch. We walked across the street to my parents' house for brunch as usual. We ate, played a game called Telestrations, and enjoyed opening gifts together. Then we walked home, dropped off our things, and collected our gifts for round three: dinner at Jim's parents' house. We ate yummy prime rib, opened gifts, had dessert, and took our ...

For the last several years, we've been invited to Grandma Cole's house to decorate Christmas cookies as part of our December activity list. The kids look forward to this very much - and so do the adults. :) This year, Grandma prepped by baking the cookies ahead of time so we could walk in and start decorating. We had a great time chatting and decorating and eventually eating our cookies - and now we have a giant platter full in our kitchen, tempting us daily! 

We invited the Drew kids (three of them, at least) over to make candy canes with us last weekend. We read the recipe, talked about the steps, and completed them together. Then we started grabbing slightly cooled gooey boiled sugar and rubbing it in our butter-coated hands! Sometimes it was very hot. In the end, everyone made some lovely creations and we had a super fun time!

Our family left after the holidays and JT wanted to get moving on the Christmas tree, so he offered to set it up. We had two hours before we needed to leave for basketball, and he was a man on a mission. The kids put up trees while I did the rest of the house, and in that limited time we had everything done except ornaments on the biggest tree. Sunday, they finished that up and then we were done! Then Haley and I went to see The Nutcracker at Pacific Northwest Ballet in Seattle Sunday evening, and we loved it. It was magical to watch Haley enjoy ballet. She understands the story, the emotion, and the difficulty of the movement. We had such a great time together. This week I also stopped into Snowflake Lane in Bellevue. It wasn't crowded at all and I got to see Jim at work for a bit. Impromptu date night!

Christmas came so quickly this year! School wasn't out until December 21, and then we went skiing on Saturday. Sunday we had plans with friends (boys shooting rifles, girls making candles) and a bonfire with family that evening. And then it was Christmas Eve! We had a lovely day at home together, and then ate our nice dinner and went to Christmas Eve service at our church.  We came home and ate our traditional apple pie... but changed up what we watched. Normally we watch the original Grinch Who Stole Christmas and send them to bed. But older kids with later bedtimes and an early church service meant we had time for Home Alone. Our favorite part is to watch them laugh and laugh at the pranks. And then the big day! We told the kids they could go downstairs and open their stockings when they first woke up (without us - a first). And then they could wake us up at 7 AM. But Haley woke up at 6:45 and decided to read in bed and wait for her family... so at seven ...