Christmas

Okay everybody, pretend it's the week after Christmas and mine is the first of all the blogs that you read to have the 'Christmas' post up. Not (probably) the very last. Thanks for being accommodating.

Christmas was weird this year. It was just really hard to get into the Christmas spirit after Krista passed away. But Mike and I faked it for Zoe. She had a great Christmas!

Zoe's Christmas program at school was the same day as Krista's funeral. We were actually really glad about that. After having a heart wrenching day, it was nice to spend the evening watching Zoe and her class mates sing songs and be SUPER cute.

Can you guess what song they're singing?

It took Zoe a while to warm up and get her red nose on.

She mostly just sat there and watched Mrs. Shannon. I'm pretty sure she didn't sing one word.

Then about half way through the program, Zoe laid down on the ground and started saying, "I'm tired". Poor girl. She really was exhausted. It had been quite a week and and exhausting day for all of the cousins.

Zoe and her class! Yay!

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On Christmas Eve, the whole family met over at Krista and Jared's house for our traditional Christmas dinner/present exchange/cousins nativity program/Grandpa The Night Before Christmas reading event. It was weird this year without Krista there. We still had a good time though, Krista loved parties and family get togethers so we knew we just had to have a good time enjoying each other's company.

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I share this very long video with you all so that you can get a feeling for how Christmas morning went at our house this year. I think Zoe got out of bed at about 8:00am, we promptly began the opening of presents, and we finally finished at around 11:30am. Yes, 3 1/2 hours. No, we didn't get a lot of presents. It took Zoe soooooooo long to do, well, everything. You'll see.

I won't make you watch any more. :) Oh my goodness, will she ever get excited and jump into the presents like Mike and I used to do when we were kids (and still do)?

Superman!

Princess dress/nightgown!

How can three people make such a big mess?

Another tradition that we have (Krista and Jared started it), is to go caroling at a retirement home on Christmas afternoon. We all meet over at Krista and Jared's house and drive over to the retirement home together. It's really a great way to spend Christmas afternoon. This year Jared said he still wanted to do it even though it was going to be so hard. And we had also lost our best singer. :) I'm glad we went because it was very uplifting. The best thing about it was watching Jared talking to the residents, wishing them a merry Christmas, and making their day a better one. Nobody there knew how much Jared was hurting. He wanted to make their day brighter. It was cool.