Happy New Year!!

So, one of my many New Year's resolutions is to start working on this blog! I need to stay up-to-date with it, a lot better than I did when I started it. I will be posting pictures from our Christmas at home which means I'm going backwards, but oh well. I want to share with you all our wonderful experience that we had this year. This was the first year that we felt each of the kids actually started understanding what Christmas is really all about, so we had special things that we did to remind us of the true meaning of Christmas!
1. We sat down and watched The Nativity Story, all together as a family. Now this is not particularly a "kid" movie, but we felt that it would be good for them to really see what happened when baby Jesus was born. So we watched it, along with question and answer time too!
2. We opened a gift on Christmas Eve, super special treat for the kids...except that it was pajamas. But we wanted to start a little tradition, so that's what we're going to open every year on Christmas Eve, so that they can have something special to open their presents in on Christmas morn.



3. We made a birthday cake for Jesus, and sang to Him before we tore into that yummy thing mommy made!



We had such a great time together playing in the snow, making gingerbread men and their house, baking Christmas cookies, making gifts for our neighbors, Daddy fried another turkey, yummm. There were so many things that we did together and it just meant so much to each of us. The Lord really blessed us this year! We wanted to also try a new light on gifts and have each of the kids get three gifts, just like the gifts that the wisemen brought to baby Jesus, but didn't quite know what to get three toddlers to represent gold, frankincense and myrhh. As they get older we are going to try and explain it to them well, so that they understand the meaning of each gift they receive. We want them to enjoy Santa Claus as well! We were sure to leave him milk and cookies, and some reindeer food too.



I took a picture of our main Christmas tree, but forgot to take a picture of all of our other decor throughout the house...booooo. I took everything down last night. Except for the kids trees in their rooms, I'll run and take a couple of shots of those to show you. I forgot to snap a picture of the tree that we let the kids decorate in the front of the house. They had a blast, and did a super job actually!

All in all, we had a wonderful time together and stayed pretty busy.



During the construction of our gingerbread house.



Tayah's Pink Princess Tree



The Boys Texas Cowboy Tree...as you can see most of the ornaments have been rearranged in some way, they just couldn't seem to keep their distance...oh well, I told them they could decorate it. They loved it!

Happy New Year everyone! May the Lord surely bless your year to come! Love ya'll!!