Merry Christmas

What a terrific Christmas we had! I love being a parent at Christmas - it makes it so fun to see your kids light up with all the wonderful presents that you got them! We made it another year Santa free! I really don't want to encourage the whole Santa thing, because I really want to instill in my children the spirit of giving and that it is Jesus's birthday! I love kicking off the Christmas season with our Operation Christmas Child Shoe Boxes. The kids love buying gifts for the kids whose Mommies and Daddies can't. And this year it was really neat to be able to track our boxes. All our boxes went to Madagascar!! We got the email the day before Christmas Eve that they were there. I showed the girls all the pictures of kids in Madagascar and they were thrilled to see the stacks of boxes that looked just like theirs and all the kids waiting to get one! Another awesome experience we had this year, was buying gifts for a family in need in our area. Our Sunday School class was blessed with the opportunity to help out the sweetest family and it was so fun to have our kids involved. There was a little girl who is a year older than the girls and a little boy who is a year older than Harper. This made it perfect to shop for them. Carly, Chloe, and Harper got to pick out things that they thought would really make them happy on Christmas morning. They also helped wrap the presents and deliver them! I think this made an awesome connection to see how great it feels to help others and to put them first! The whole month of December was exciting and they were just excited to give! I didn't want to mention gifts to them because I didn't want that to be all they were thinking about - I didn't want them to want anything. We did go and see Santa, but that is just for the pics and the girls really wanted to conquer that fear of not crying. I don't want to take something away from them, but I just don't want to push the subject either. Well on Christmas morning the girls woke up and came into our room (they had no clue that there would be presents). I said Merry Christmas to them, and Carly's eyes got big and she said so excitedly, "IT'S JESUS'S BIRTHDAY!" I was so happy to hear that! She wasn't excited for presents, she was excited for the birthday of Jesus! I loved it. So, we told them we had a party for Jesus and we went into the living room and there were all the gifts. It was a great Christmas season and I hate that it is over.

Here are some pics of our Christmas gatherings:

Christmas Eve entailed going to my parent's house. It is always a loud fun with 8 kids 7 and under!! We had a terrific time.

Here is Finley with Oma
All the little "Grand Dears"

Here we are singing Christmas songs for advent - great memories! You may be wondering why all these kids are on beach towels - that was their "space" during gift wrapping. This way we could all see the gifts and the kids wouldn't get frustrated with others too close.

Reagan

Our wrapping paper was pretty tough to unwrap. After Kaitlyn finally got her gift open, she had to show off her muscles!

Carly and Chloe admiring their gifts - Carly got a princess dress up chest and Chloe got an easy bake oven!

Harper thanking Grandma for his cool race car!

Finley opening her first gift for the season - a lady bug outfit!

Christmas Eve night - preparing for the party!

Our sweet babies!

Chloe bought Carly some wings at the Dollar Store! She loved them! We take the kids every year to the Dollar Tree to buy each other a Christmas present. They have so much fun decided what to purchase - it is always hard to pick out 1 gift! Then they come home and wrap it and put it under the tree. They know exactly what each one will like and enjoy being something special for them. Last year the girls ended up buying the same thing for each other and this year they had the exact same thing in the exact same color for Harper - I did have to intervene on that choice - he did not need 2 blue tractor trailers!!

Chloe opening her crown from Carly

Finley sat next to the Christmas tree and just played with this ornament - she had fun!

Chloe riding her bike inside - it was raining all day so the house became an indoor track!

Carly loving being a big girl!

Finley relaxing with her Cabbage Patch kid from Grandma and Grandpa

After we opened our presents at home, we went to Grandma Kay and Grandpa Eddie's house for lunch and Christmas. They got the girls these princess Barbies - they LOVED them!

They also got them a playhouse! They were thrilled and I know they will be in it daily!