What a wonderful Christmas!

Each year we take pleasure in each of our family Christmas traditions. We take a tour of lights for Family Home Evening, we put up the tree and decorate it together, and we hide the pickle ornament and whoever finds it gets an extra present. We take our time and carefully set up each of the nativities we've collected over the years. And on Christmas Eve we go out for chinese food and giggle like maniacs over all the fortunes in our fortune cookies. It's so much fun and I always find it touching how these little things bring us together.
My favorite tradition is a simple one. On Christmas Eve we all gather in the living room and read in Luke 2 about Christ's birth, which we always enjoy. It's amazing to me how at first the kids grumble and fuss about reading, but as we read a gentle spirit falls over the room and then they don't want to stop. We also added a quick scripture chase to our reading this year. Each person looked through the Book of Mormon and found where Christ's coming and ministry were foretold. Then we took turns reading our selections. How sweet it is to be able to open our scriptures at any time and be able to read the testimonies of prophets who help us to know Christ better, who remind of us His kindness and tenderness towards us, and above all teach us of the atonement. It was a really neat way to start our Christmas celebration.
After that, it feels kind of anticlimactic to open presents, but the children insist. I'll put some photos in the next post.