Merry Christmas! I am so grateful to have and be able to spend time with family. It is such a treat to be able to fly all the way to Chicago and have the whoole family congregate for the holidays at my parents house. Adam and Lisa from Champagne; Tyler, Brandi, and Grandma from Utah, and us from Seattle!
Lizzie and cousin Allison donned their matching homemade gloves and hats from Grandma to go see the Christmas tree light show. The tree sparkles, glows different colors, and flashes lights all to the tunes of various Christmas songs.
We stopped by "that house" where some random family has decided to entertain the
neighborhood with their elaborate Christmas decorating!
This was a special day for Julie, being her FIRST Christmas! She seems to sense the cheery mood and has been such a good girl. Always happy and smiley!
Santa came early Christmas Eve night due to some jetlag...I mean sleighjag. Lizzie had trouble sleeping that night, though, so Dave brought her downstairs for a little while, carefully covering her eyes as they passed the "Christmas Tree Room" only to have her sneak away a couple minutes later and get a sneak peak of all the presents and balloons. I've never seen her eyes get so wide!
On Christmas Eve we had our annual program where each person participates in some form of entertainment whether it be singing, piano, reading a story, etc. Then, we had the kids act out the nativity story.
All the kids are so little that we had a hard time getting them to participate at all! There was a lot of fussing over having to wear anything on their heads. Lizzie refused to wear any part of her costume and wanted to sit on the couch and she was playing the part of Mary! But the show must go on! Her understudy, Julie, was willing to step in and did a lovely job!
We ate so much good food! Homemade caramel corn, cookies, truffles, cinnamon rolls, and much much more.
We kept the program short due to small attention spans, but Lizzie and Jared both performed by singing a Christmas song!
Then Christmas morning came! It was the usual tornado of presents, kids squealing, fun, chaos, giving, and love.
This was Julie's first Christmas and she's already a pro at tearing open wrapping paper.
Another highlight of Christmas is the tradition of sitting around and staring at the telephone!!
Well, only while Trevor's on his mission in Russia. We called him up, put him on speaker phone and all took turns asking him questions and listening to his stories and adventures about Russian missionary work.
