The 12 Days of Christmas

So back tracking a bit back to early December and one day my mom came up and delivered a whole big box full of presents for our family. One to open each day until Christmas. This had to be so much work for her to put together for our family and all of my siblings as well. She said although it did take a big effort it was lots and lots of fun planning and shopping for everything. All of the gifts were centered around the family and she accompanied it with a nice letter with instructions and some heartfelt words about how much her and my dad love all of us and how family is the most important thing and how they wanted us all to feel that this holiday season.

The kids were seriously over the moon excited to open something up each day. We opted to open the gift in the morning before everyone went on their respective ways. Each individual gift was also labeled with a nice little thought and instructions or ideas for what to do with it.

Some of the gifts included:
-Christmas CD and fudge
-Christmas coloring and activity books
-Cookie mixes, recipes, and cookie cutters
-ornaments
-Christmas movies
-Pancake mix, syrup, and Spam - yes my family (minus me) loves spam
-Cute Christmas bowl filled with candy
-Christmas books (My mom bought the Night Before Christmas where you can record yourself telling the story. Our kids love listening to grandma's voice.)
-Hot cocoa and candy canes
-Money (to use to do a good deed with)
-Money (just for us to use for something fun)
-Pajamas for all the kids

The pajamas were the very last gift the kids got to open on Christmas Eve when their grandma and grandpa were here. I got them some slippers too to open with them.

I wish I would have taken more pictures of the kids opening these gifts every day. It was seriously so fun and gave them something to look forward to. It added lots of extra Christmas spirit around our house and a few of the things coincidentally coincided with things we were doing with our service advent. Pretty neat!

Here are the kids in their new pj's on Christmas Eve:

We really appreciated the effort by my parents and for making our holidays merrier and brighter!