Christmas 2012

Better late than never, right? Part of the problem with getting this post together has been that our camera broke on Christmas eve, so we don't have many pictures from the holidays! Despite our camera breaking, we did have a great Christmas filled with family and friends. We celebrated Christmas eve with Grandma and Papa before church.

Jude was very excited about his large present- an air hockey table!

Lily was mostly interested in the wrapping paper and bows, but she did take a moment to appreciate the Raggedy Ann doll she received. After opening presents with Grandma and Papa, we headed to Christmas eve service at church. Both boys dressed up as shepherds this year.

After church, we had dinner with our friends Ruthie and Edward. Then it was time to head home and open one gift (new pajamas) and get ready for Santa!

Christmas morning came early... but considering we had to catch a mid-morning flight to Virginia, we didn't mind.

After opening all of our presents, we hurried out the door to the airport to spend a week with family in Virginia. It was a whirlwind of a morning, but fun!

It's Beginning to look a lot like Christmas...

We've been busy getting ready for Christmas! The boys have been out of school all week and we kept ourselves entertained with play dates, making gingerbread houses, wrapping presents and baking cookies.

I think we are ready for Santa to make his appearance!

Christmas 2011

Wow, it is almost February and I am just getting around to posting about Christmas. I'm going to blame it on being pregnant- or maybe on the fact that we have sold our house and are moving to a new house... they are both good excuses, right?

Ready for Church and dinner on Christmas Eve




Reading The Polar Express before bed


And the fun begins Christmas morning






And we finished the day off with Christmas Dinner

Christmas 2010

A little late in getting these photos up... but we had a great Christmas this year. After we went to dinner with Grandma and Papa on Christmas eve, we headed home to open one present. The boys got matching pajamas! We put out cookies, milk and lettuce for Santa and his reindeer (we were out of carrots and figured the reindeer liked lettuce too). We ended the evening with the annual reading of The Polar Express.





It looks like the reindeer like lettuce too!


Since we celebrated Christmas early with our family that lives far away, we had a very calm Christmas. Noah did wake us up at 5:00 though! We let Jude sleep until 6 and then we woke him up to see what Santa left for us.





Grandma and Papa came over for breakfast and then we had a relaxing day at home. The early morning wake up let us all take a long afternoon nap! We hope you all had a holiday too!

Christmas Eve 2010

We went to the children's service on Christmas Eve at church again this year. It is such a neat tradition at our church that the children can dress up as one of the characters from the Christmas story and they all parade to the front during their part. Noah decided he would dress up as one of the Wise Men and Jude was Joseph.


Everyone in costume, ready to go!


Noah anxiously awaiting his part!


Eli, Emily, Jude and Noah after their award winning performances. Emily's decision to be Mary totally solidified Jude's decision to play the role of Joseph.

Christmas Play Date

We went to a Christmas play date hosted by my Garden Circle this morning. The boys had so much fun and are getting more and more excited about Santa coming in a few days!

An Early Christmas

Aunt Leigh and Uncle Frank decided to come all the way from Alaska to celebrate Christmas early with us. Sarah, Heidi and Bodie joined in on the fun. We had such a good time with everyone here and the boys especially loved playing with cousin Bodie. We didn't do such a great job of taking photos while they were here, we were too busy having fun! We hope you all come back really soon to visit!

Christmas 2009

After dinner with Aunt Leigh, Grandma and Papa, we got the boys all bathed and ready for bed and Dad read them the Polar Express. We set out cookies, milk for Santa and an apple and carrots for the reindeer (Noah insisted that reindeer eat apples).



After Noah's morning meltdown because he didn't see his presents on the other side of the couch.....Christmas morning, was full of excitement! The boys had so much fun opening all of the presents and playing with each of them. Noah was so happy that Santa brought him an orange bike with a horn.



The sleeping bags from Aunt Leigh were a big hit too!



Santa must have known that Jude likes to throw things (i.e. the sippy cup incident of November 2009) because he brought him a basketball hoop!

Christmas Eve Church Service

Our church has a wonderful children's service on Christmas Eve where all of the children are encouraged to dress up as something from the nativity story. When I asked Noah what he wanted to be, he immediately decided he would be the star! And boy, was he the star! Most boys, including Jude, dress up as shepherds. Some dress up as Joseph or an animal. I am not quite sure they knew what to do with such a large star, but they improvised and picked him up high above everyone else and he did a great job acting out his role!





A special thanks to Aunt Leigh for helping me make this memorable costume! :)

Catch up...

So we slacked off on the blogging this holiday season... but we are going to attempt to play catch up! Here is what our December looked like...

We had numerous attempts at getting a holiday card picture. The difficulty involved in trying to get a 2 year old and a 3 year old to smile for a picture together can not even be put into words. Here were some of the finalists:






And then Jude went a got a horrible black eye! He ran into the corner of the table and it was not pretty!



And here was our holiday card photo choice... with Jude's black eye removed!