Our Christmas (finally!)

Wow - I can't believe how quickly Christmas came and went and now we are into a brand new year. We had a wonderful Christmas! On Christmas Eve we had a short candlelight service and it was great. I had never actually been to one like this before where the Pastor was reading Scripture and the Christmas story and they were using candles to represent Mary, Joseph, Jesus, angels, etc. It was really great and had a wonderful message. Christmas morning, I didn't take a ton of pictures of the girls opening presents because we were videotaping and if I can figure out how to add my videos to this I am going to put a couple on here, because Amelia cracked me up with getting excited about gifts. When she is excited or when she is upset as well, she throws her hands up in the air. Isabella was so sweet opening presents. When she got up, (She got to sleep with mommy and daddy Christmas Eve) before we left our room we sat down and read the Christmas story from a little pop up book that I found. I was so excited I found one that actually told the story rather than a more made up "story". We had a book kind of like it when I was growing up. Then we prayed and talked a little about it being Jesus birthday. When we got out to the family room, we had one of her presents a little play tent house set up and she walked out, didn't notice it at first and then saw it and whispered "Wow!" :) We decided that we were going to take turns opening gifts so that she could open a couple, then it Amelia's turn or it was mommy's turn, then daddy's - so that she wouldn't get too caught up in just opening and going to the next or doing that at my parents house later. I was pleasantly surprised at how sweet she was. She would open and then say "Your turn Mommy" (Of course, she liked to help me too) Then it actually took us a few hours opening gifts, not because we had a ton to open, just because she would open something and sit there and play with it for a while. We actually rushed her along at the end because we wanted to get brunch ready for my parents to come up. Then we had a relaxing day at home, got Isabella down for a nap so she wouldn't be too hyper later and then went to my parents where my brother and his family came down. As soon as Isabella walked in their door and saw Garrett, she said "I want to give Garrett his shooter" She had been so excited for weeks to give Garrett this little flying disc gun that she had bought him at the $ store. She was cute handing out her presents to everyone. Here are a few pictures from down at my parents house. I had tried to one of my nephews and niece with the girls as well, but blogger isn't allowing me to post it. (I guess I'm going to have to update to the new blogger even though I keep hearing problems about it.)

All together we had a really nice Christmas season, it just went by way too fast!

Then a few days after Christmas, my cousin Alyssa, her husband Todd and daughter Caiti (pronounced by Isabella as Kay -- Tee) came down to visit and celebrate New Years with us. This is the second year they've done this, so we're hoping this will become a tradition. It was so much fun having them visit and to be able to spend New Years Eve at home, shooting off a few fireworks and playing some games. Although, I'm late in saying it, I hope everyone had a blessed Christmas and New Years!! Now I'm off to plan a 3 year old birthday party in the next couple weeks as well as going on a retreat with the youth group next weekend, so I guess I'll be pretty busy this month as well! :)