The pictures my sister took of us at Thanksgiving were good and I used them to make our Christmas cards this year! I love giving and receiving Christmas cards! I try to hang all our cards up so we can see the beautiful thoughts and wishes from our family and friends. Here is our card and card wall this year!

Saturday, David and I made sugar cookies together. He has really been into baking and decorating lately. He watches videos on his kindle about how to bake cupcakes and decorate them. Maybe it’s some kind of sign about what he will be when he grows up. He wanted to pipe the frosting on the cookies by himself. I let him. We had some heavy frosted, funky, sugar cookies.

Sunday, Christmas Eve, was a very busy day. It was also a very special day. My church held morning service with another local church at their location. I had the morning off! This is highly unusual, but I was happy to go to church with Andrew! I dressed the kids up in their Christmas outfits! They were so adorable!! They, however, were not in the state of mind or mood to have their pictures taken! David was too wound up and excited about everything. Emma hadn’t taken a nap and all she wanted was for me to hold her. So every time I tried to get a picture she would take off towards me! It was so frustrating. 🙂 Here are the pictures I managed to get that still turned out pretty cute though.

 

By the time we made it to church Sunday morning, Emma had her hair bow pulled out and her shoes off! Sigh! 🙂

After Sunday lunch I tidied up the house, made sure I had things set out and ready for dinner, and then later had to leave for the Christmas eve service to be held at five o’clock at my church.  (I posted the prelude on my worship archives page! Our retired organist and I played a Christmas Fantasy together! It was a lot of fun!) After the service I drove home. Jim and Alesia had arrived at the house and were with the kids. We all then went to Andrew’s Christmas eve service at seven o’clock. (I probably should have kept David home because he coughed all through the service! I felt bad for the people sitting around us! He keeps coming down with this cold. I don’t know if it is the same one that he is just not getting completely rid of, or if it is something different each time.) It was great to have Jim and Alesia here with us this Christmas! It was good to have some family around. We had a great time!

This morning we opened our gifts to one another. The kids were so fun! I love watching their faces as they open presents. David loved all his gifts, but one gift seemed to stand out above the rest. We got him a marble run, and he literally played with it pretty much all day!

Emma loves her little pop up toy, her ball, and her baby dolls! Grand-mama helped Emma open presents this morning. Once Emma could get a glimpse of what was under the wrapping paper she wanted to open the package. 🙂 So cute!

Andrew and I knew the “big” gift we were each getting each other this year. I know, not much fun huh! We did get each other another gift or two that we didn’t know about though. Andrew wanted a new knife set, and I wanted new dishes! I love my dishes!!! They are so beautiful!!! We ate off of them at lunch today!!! 🙂

Andrew put all of David’s Legos in a plastic bin to keep them from getting everywhere! This also helps prevent Emma from getting a hold of them!

After we finished with presents, we all ate cinnamon rolls! They were yummy! Then the kids went back to playing with their toys. Emma spent quite a bit of cuddle time with G-pa before her nap time this morning! So sweet!

Andrew cooked a beautiful, tasty turkey for lunch! We had mashed potatoes, green beans and carrots, rolls, and cranberry sauce. With chocolate cake for dessert. I took some cooking short cuts this holiday because I didn’t want to spend a lot of time cooking. We had frozen rolls, and Andrew put some butter, kosher salt and thyme on them. They tasted wonderful! I made the chocolate cake from scratch, but used store bought frosting. I haven’t quite mastered home made chocolate cake frosting. The milk chocolate canned frosting always tastes better to me anyway.  I was so full!! I know I have gained probably ten pounds this holiday season! After we cleaned up, and everyone settled down. We all took a nap! It was wonderful! The rest of the day was peaceful. The kids played with their toys and we did nothing. Yay! Andrew and I have this unspoken tradition of singing Christmas carols together on Christmas. I usually sit down and start playing carols and he eventually comes in and starts singing.  David and Emma wanted to be involved somehow this evening. David tried to sing a little and Emma helped me play piano a little! 🙂

Christmas is truly a wonderful time of year! Merry Christmas!

PK