Christmas Evening

I know we are three weeks past Christmas and this is all old news but I wanted to share some more of our Christmas.

After we had our little family Christmas at home, we went to Eric's parents' house and celebrated with the rest of the family.  We had our traditional Italian dinner for Christmas and then we opened presents. Now that the boys are older, it made Christmas so much fun.  It is really special seeing your children get so excited about opening presents and spending time with their extended family.  We look forward to continually developing family traditions and the boys growing in their understanding of why we celebrate Christmas. 

My little Abraham as an elf.  This is a classic face he makes.

Winston with his Auntie Alicia.

Uncle Adam, Auntie Ally and little Geneva.

They quickly got into the idea of unwrapping presents.  They were trying to help by even opening up other people's presents...whoops.

Eric really loves his little niece.

These hats!  Just too cute!

Auntie Alicia with her custom made pillows courtesy of Auntie Ally.

Boxes are for climbing, right?

Mastering their paper ripping technique.

Individual ramekins of tiramisu.

I am so blessed by my family.

Modeling my new footie pajamas.  Perfect for a cold winter night!

Christmas Morning

I am FINALLY getting some updates in for Christmas.  I just have not been in a blogging mood lately.  Have you ever had that?  I think part of it is the emotional let down after the holidays are over.  It was such a special time for our family these last several weeks and now the decorations are taken down and it is back to the normal routine.

We had a nice low key Christmas.  Eric was off work for Christmas Eve which was really nice because we got to have an extra family day.  We just hung around the house and started working on making ladyfingers for our Christmas tiramisu.  Later in the afternoon, we headed out to pick up some last minute items at the store and then went to the Christmas Eve service at our church.  Christmas morning we slept in as late as the boys would let us and prepared french toast and bacon for breakfast.  As you can imagine, the boys love when they get breakfasts like that.  Afterwards we opened presents and continued to hang out at home until we headed over to Eric's parents' house to celebrate with the whole family. 

They totally love the fake fireplace thing for the TV.  They tell us "Fire...hot" and even stand back from it like it is dangerous.

Disney movie in the stocking!

They were more interested in playing with the rocking horse than opening presents.

They quickly became more interested in ripping off the paper.

They love that they can draw as much as they want and I love that there is no mess!

I love this thing and have used it everyday since Christmas.

Playing with their new cash register.  Winston is wearing papa's new hat.

We were not planning on doing too much by way of presents this year but we had a generous family member give us cash so we could buy the boys some things.   It made the whole shopping process a lot of fun because we could buy things we would not have otherwise. It was a special Christmas and we loved getting to experience it through our little ones' eyes.  In all of it, our Christmas was not about the presents but the celebration of Emmanuel coming into this world.  We are so thankful for our Savior, Jesus Christ.