Christmas 2011..family, friends and traditions

We were blessed with four special nights with friends and family, celebrating the birth of Jesus, the miraculous first Christmas gift, and enjoying good food and wonderful friendships.  We met friends at the Live Nativity on Friday evening, where we drove our car through the sets where actors were dressed in costumes, telling the story of the birth of Jesus-it really was incredible! We headed to Starbucks for hot cocoa and hanging out afterward.  Saturday evening, we gathered with our church friends for a candlelight service and singing.  Christmas afternoon, we gathered with two other families for Christmas dinner, and the kids had a great time playing together and making ornaments while the adults got to enjoy talking.....we actually did get to sit and talk because the sweet 11-year-old girls did a great job playing with the little ones!  We finished off with the Nance family Christmas on the 26th and grandma and PaPa's house.  Close friends joined our family for a fun evening of playing, exchanging gifts and eating....someone even started the meal with cheesecake! ;)  We are truly blessed by the special people in our lives!

Here are some pictures from Christmas morning:

This boy found the last bit of milk and cookies, and enjoyed a little breakfast!

Discovering his present from Santa...

Our morning started at 5:30 am, when Hannah and Eliza burst into our bedroom, shouting "Christmas is here!!  There are presents out there!!!"  We tried to get them to go back to sleep by telling them it was the middle of the night....but who were we kidding?!  There was NO way they could sleep, so we got up and they started playing with their Santa gifts with Daddy, while I prepped brunch (It was actually really good that we got an early start, because I had forgotten to put together the egg casserole and soak it overnight, so the extra hours helped save our brunch!)...

Eliza is always my helper in the kitchen.  I told her that we needed to crack 4 eggs into the bowl, and then walked away for a minute, and came back to 4 perfectly cracked eggs in the bowl, except for one little piece of shell that she told me she had already removed!  She truly is helpful in the kitchen!!

By 7:00, the girls were really wanting to open some more gifts, and Daddy was getting a bit impatient, too!  So, we let them go wake up Clara to join the party, and they started with their stockings...

We sat down and sang Happy Birthday to Jesus, and ate some cinnamon roll birthday cake before we headed to the tree for more gifts.  Molly knows Joe too well, and couldn't resist this gift from The Christmas Story....I suppose this lovely leg lamp will be showcased in our front window next year...

Hannah had some of the best expressions of excitement and joy with each gift that she opened!

Hugging her gift...

Isaiah kept himself busy with a favorite game of dropping things off his tray and looking to see where they fell....."uh, oh"....

Eliza was thrilled with this and said "It's a real boy toy!" 

Being goofy...

Grandma and PaPa joined us for brunch, and brought the girls the Playmobile zoo set-it has already provided HOURS of entertainment!!!
We added this "raspberry soup" to our traditional brunch this year, and the kids all loved it!  It had raspberries, yogurt, and a little cinnamon and clove...

Another new tradition was our Jesse Tree.  I had intended to have them hang the Jesse tree ornaments on a small Christmas tree, but we started them on these hooks that were already up from our Halloween picture banner, and it ended up that we had exactly the right number of hooks and it was more fun to see the pictures spread out in order from Creation to the birth of Jesus!

This has been a really fun year for trying new traditions and deciding which traditions make this season special for our family and glorify the sacrifice and amazing gift of Jesus, God with us.