Our first "Christmas" was with our community group, we had a Christmas soiree. Yes, a soiree. It sounds fancy and it was. We dressed in our Christmas best and enjoyed delicious h'ors dourves.
The food displayed so fancy like.
Even the children were looking oh so beautiful and dapper.
After we ate we enjoyed a really fun white elephant gift exchange. I ended up stealing an awesome gift and then made Jed steal it from me so that we were guaranteed to go home with it (we have a 2 steal rule). It was a box full of goodies but what I really wanted was the knitted cowl scarf made by my friend Emily.
I love my family. Cannot believe how blessed we are.
My parents were here for Christmas Eve so we spent most of the day playing then after naps, we were able to Skype with my sister and her family while we opened some gifts. Love technology!
This is really the best I could do. They were too excited to open some presents.
Auntie Em sent some great presents for our kids. I think she got Lainey her favorite gift - she knows her so well! :)
I always have giggled and probably teased my mom at the amount of pictures we have of us kids opening presents at birthdays, Christmases, etc. but now being a mom I kind of understand. It is SO sweet to watch your kids open presents and get excited about their new treasures. I'm convinced this aspect of Christmas is way more fun as a mom - it is so great to pick out presents, wrap them up and watch them open the gifts. It's better to give than receive indeed!
I think things got a little crazy after this because I don't have any more pictures. We had dinner and then headed to the Christmas Eve service at church.
My mom got this really sweet picture of Lainey during the candlelit singing of "Silent Night." Lainey was mesmerized by the candle and definitely knew the words to the song thanks to our Cedarmont Kids Christmas Carols DVD that I've been lucky enough to listen to over and over and over again the past few weeks... :)
Christmas morning Lainey was the first one up, of course and the poor girl had to wait quite awhile for her sleepy brother to wake up.
She helped set out and organize the presents.
We read some books and played with some of her new toys from her Ma and Papa....
Created some brilliant works of art...
Played dress up...
And read some more books...
We read the story of Jesus' birth from the Jesus Storybook Bible and then we let the kids open presents from us. Here we go again with a bunch of pictures of gift opening. Kind of silly but I love their reactions. This year we decided to do 4 gifts for each kid - something they want, something they need, something to wear and something to read. It was both fun and practical to do it that way!
We enjoyed a quiet morning at home with Daddy's famous waffles, enjoying our new toys and some baths before heading to my Grandma's in Knoxville for the afternoon and evening, which was really fun too but I have no pictures to prove it.
Loved spending another Christmas with my family. Doing some simple math, I realized this was Jed's and my 5th Christmas together -- our first was when we got engaged, our second was when we shared our news that we were having a baby, our third was Lainey's first, our fourth was Wyatt's first and this one... this one was just really nice. Nothing necessarily new or exciting but it was still wonderful and special, just as this time of year should be!
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