And Christmas came and went...

Christmas is over :( so sad.  But it was wonderful and I definitely need to write about all the highlights!  We also feel VERY fortunate to have all been in relatively good health for Christmas Day, since, two days before Christmas, the flu seems to have hit our house!  We had 3 kids puking, and Lee and I felt terrible as well.  Luckily though, it was short lived, and we were feeling a lot better by Christmas Eve - still a little low on energy and being very cautious about what we ate, but good enough to be able to enjoy the festivities!  Thank goodness!  And by Christmas Day, we all felt great.
On Christmas Eve, our children were very sad to say goodbye, to Candy Kane, our Elf, who had become like a member of the family!  He left a note on his last day to which included a section that told the kids that Santa was going to lift the magic for a few minutes after they read the letter so that they could give him Hugs and Kisses goodbye!  The were thrilled at finally be allowed to touch him and they said their sad good-byes.

We had didn't do a whole lot Christmas Eve, as we were trying to conserve our energy for the evening, but we did have a lot of food and things to prepare!

We spent Christmas Eve at Jordan and Melanie's house this year, with my parents, Sis Darker, Grandma and Grandpa Cooper, and Ashlyn and Jeff.  It was a lot of fun!  Great food, and great company!

We had the usual talents performed - some piano solos of course (Mason and Dakota included, and of course Scarlett had to take her turn as well!)

And of course the evening wouldn't be complete without my Dad's amazing Magic Skills!!  He always has a few tricks that he's obviously spent hours perfecting (ha ha!).  It's actually hilarious, he seems to somehow mess up or forget every single magic trick he does!!  You'd almost think he plans it.  It's so funny to watch him stumble and try to figure out what he's doing wrong, or to hear the children saying that they know how he did it!  I love this picture of him, it shows his fun loving personality!

We also did a whole bunch of Minute to Win It games this year.  We had a lot of fun with it.  We did Team Loewen vs. Team Nielson, and the kids loved it.  Here's a picture of our strong looking team! (We also had my parents join us!)

And here's some pictures of a few of the games!

And now see if you can guess what is going on in this next picture....

Come on, isn't it obvious?  We are acting out the nativity, of course!  Funny how the usual costumes we wear, although cheesy, really do add a big effect to the pictures!  But we did it just the same and it didn't seem to make a difference to the children, and the adults were probably happy to not have to wear one!
Anyway, after a fun night, we ended with the usual opening of Christmas PJs!!

And then we took the kids home to bed to await Santa's arrival.  They were pretty thrilled and I think they got way too spoiled, yet again!  I always seem to buy way too much for them, I just can't resist when I find something on sale that I know they will love!!  It probably brings me even more joy than them!  Grandma and Grandpa joined us this year for breakfast and present opening, and it was a really nice addition!  One other fun thing we did this year was to have the kids each make something special for eachother for Christmas and to wrap it and put it under the tree.  They had a lot of fun doing that and it was nice to be able to teach them the fun of giving and not just receiving.  Mason made Griffin a drum and Dakota a necklace, Dakota painted them each canvas art work, and Griffin made Dakota a jewelery box and Mason some church puzzles.  Overall a very fun and memorable Christmas!