Christmas Eve/Christmas

Our Christmas Eve nativity: Mary struggling to hold baby Jesus, and Joseph.  I played all other characters.

 Christmas morning!

 Christmas is so much fun when you have kids that are old enough to really enjoy the magic of it all!

 Most of the morning was spent like this- Daddy handing out presents as fast as he can to excited kids!

 Modeling her new Tinkerbell apron.  Alexa got Ariel.

I love Christmas time, there are so many fun things about it, but I really love on the focus of Christ and Christ-like love.  It's fun to teach the girls about it, and find fun ways to incorporate it into our traditions.  This year we ding dong ditched about half our stairwell, and the girls had a blast.  I'm not sure how secretive we were, since there was much giggling, and peeking to see if doors were opened, but boy, did they love it!

Pre-Christmas

For Thanksgiving we went to OR, and when we got back, I wanted to start decorating right away.  However, I went and got our tree out of the garage and set it up and realized how dinky it looked in this new condo, soooo, I talked Mike into letting me get a new one.  Quite the difference, huh?

 Many mornings and afternoons were spent like this, coloring parties next to the tree, watching Christmas movies.  I think we watched all the animated ones about 10 times.

 We also got a LOT of snow.  I think it snowed for about a week and a half straight.  Luckily, it was over Christmas break (and weekends), which meant that a) we had a white Christmas and b) we didn't have to worry about driving to school at all when it was really bad.

 About a week before Christmas we went and saw Santa.  They had tables set up next to the line so the kids could write letters to him, and then a few days later, he mailed us a letter back!

 Kaelyn was a little under the weather, so she looks a little drugged in the pictures, but no tears! First time since she was a 4 month old!

 She was NOT into this forced hug, though!

And what's up with the ever changing Christmas lists? We never had to deal with that before, Alexa always had anywhere between one and, like, the whole Toys R Us catalog on her list, and it stayed constant from November all the way to Christmas.  Then this year, it was constant until about, oooh, the week after black Friday.  Aka, a week after I had "finished" shopping.  Then, it changed pretty much every time we asked.  Please tell me that phase ends soon!

One sure fire way you can tell Kaelyn is under the weather is if she actually naps during nap time.  I think we were going to go pick Alexa up from school this day, and I had to wake her up to go.   I laid her on the couch and she slept through me getting her boots, coat and hat on her.