Christmas at the Dodd's

We always have Christmas at my mom and dad's house on Christmas Eve with all 12 of us.  Mom made a wonderful meal with turkey and ham and our families each brought a side dish.  Lots of yummy leftover to take home too!

Luckily, I thought to take a picture of the kids before we left for Grandma and Grandpa's because within an hour, Lanie had her dress off and was in more comfortable clothes:)

  We ate around 5 and then I wanted to try something new I had read about on Pinterest. The ideas was to do a Reader's Theater of a poem or favorite Christmas story as a whole family, I must say as a teacher, I am quite disappointed in myself that I had never thought of this before!  We videotaped it and now we'll always have our family's voices reading that story together.  My goal is to do this every year:) I had to trim it into 2 pieces, here's the first half.

The key was to do the reader's theater first, then open presents!  A little motivation and stretch the night out:)

Beautiful picture of Groat kids

Always a Menards gift card:)

Looks good, Steve!

She got her favorite perfume:)

For the soon to be ISU student:)

My first pair of black boots!

The adults played Sequence at the kitchen table while the kids played with their new toys.  Boys won...again.  We couldn't stay too late though, Santa was on his way and the kids all needed to get home to bed:)