Christmas 2025

For the first time ever, my family decided to get together on Christmas Eve Eve so that we could spend the evening with Chris and his family (since they were spending Christmas Eve with Natalee's family).  This made for a really quick turn around since school had just gotten out three days earlier.  Never the less, we made the drive up to Issaquah and spent a wonderful evening with my family and enjoyed a delicious dinner and participating in the Christmas program.  Since we have never spent Christmas Eve at home before, we had fun coming up with some new activities for the day and evening.  The kids and I went and saw Moana II in the movie theater before coming back home to decorate our gingerbread houses.  Ron then went and picked up Panda Express for dinner so that I didn't have to cook two big meals two nights in a row and then we watched A Christmas Story in the evening.  We then celebrated another quiet and pleasant day at home on Christmas with gift opening, my parent's visit, and our traditional, Filipino dinner in the dining room.  It was a wonderful three days and a great way to kick off our winter break.

December 23rd:

Our annual family photo taken in front of my parents' tree on Christmas Eve Eve.

We enjoyed a delicious, dinner turkey with all of the fixings.  My parents were kind enough to sit in the kitchen with all of the younger children so that he adults and teenagers could eat dinner together in the dining room.

After dinner was over, we begun our traditional Christmas program.  We started off with the retelling of the nativity story.  Lia and Riley starred as Mary and Joseph again this year.

The entire group posing for a picture after the story was over.  Ella and Emmett were shepherds and Logan was one of the wise men.  This is always one of my favorite parts of the evening.

After the nativity story, we enjoyed several musical numbers.  Since Ella is in her school orchestra this year, she played two Christmas songs for us.

We then rang bells to several Christmas songs with Natalee leading us.  Here is Emmett ringing his bells.

And Ella and Brynn.

And Lia and Vivi.