Christmas morning, Brian and I woke up verrry early to make sure that we arrived at my parent’s house just as my siblings and parents were waking up.

My mom got us these mini Santa hats to wear on Christmas.  Aren’t they hilarious!?The drive went fairly quick (but I wasn’t the one driving!) and we were at home ready to celebrate and spend time with my family.

Our family always makes sure to open stocking presents first thing, we then open our “homemade family” gifts second.  These are probably the gifts that we look forward to most, as we know that each of us put a lot of time and thought into these gifts.

My grandma loves to craft and work on projects, and she also likes to send us gifts for the homemade gift portion.  This year, she sent us knitted sandel slippers….that were too big!

She knew that they would be too large, and wanted us to have fun with the giant slippers 🙂  All that we needed to do was throw them in the wash, dry them, and they would shrink down to the proper size.

After stockings and homemade gifts my mom brother and I got to work in the kitchen on breakfast.  Brian took his first nap of the day.

Our Christmas morning tradition is to eat cinnamon rolls for breakfast.  This year we added in scrambled eggs, bacon, and fruit.  Gotta balance things out!

During breakfast, we played our first every Deal family Christmas breakfast gift exchange game. There was a bowl full of random gifts in the center of the table, we each rolled a die to determine whether we picked a gift from the bowl or if we stole a gift from someone else.  Rolling an odd number meant that the person had to draw from the bowl, and rolling an even meant that you could choose between picking a gift from the bowl or stealing from someone.  The gifts ended up being kitchen utensils that will definitely come in handy!

After breakfast and our game we then went into our living room to open up our “Santa” gifts…yes Santa still delivers gifts on Christmas Eve night  in my family.  It’s always so much fun to see everyone open their gifts and just spend time being cozy with each other.

One gift I am SUPER excited about is my set of Les Mills weight lifting gloves for Body Pump!  Can’t wait to use those when I teach on Saturday.

We then got all cleaned up for pictures, to eat our Christmas lunch/dinner, and head out to the movies.

Brenna and I enjoy taking “awkward family photos.”

But we like taking nice pictures too!

Our Christmas dinner was our traditional homemade lasagna, tossed salad with homemade dressing, and homemade garlic bread.  MMM…it was a delicious as I remembered.

After dinner, we loaded up the car and headed to the movie theater to watch Les Miserables.  It’s not the happiest story for a Christmas day family movie, but my family loves musicals and we thought that it was fantastic!  I was so happy that they stayed very true to the original script and music.  I highly recommend it.

We then came home, snacked on Christmas cookies, played with our new gadgets, hung out, and Brian took his second nap.

I am so thankful to have spent the Christmas holiday with people I love.  I hope that all of you who celebrate Christmas were able to enjoy it with people that are special in your life.

Merry Christmas, and I cannot wait until next year!