Christmas, 2011. Just us.

I have taken a little break from the blog, and I have to be honest and say that I've enjoyed it. I love blogging, love it, but over the holidays, it was so nice to just enjoy being with my family and not pressure myself to keep up with the posts!  That being said, let's catch up!  

We had Christmas at our house this year, just us.  We made the decision once we had children to make sure we woke up at our house on Christmas morning.  Sometimes, that is tough to do because all of our extended family lives in other states, so we definitely miss them.  However, we are loving the traditions that we are making with our party of six.  Christmas Eve, we had a beautiful service at church.  The music was wonderful, the pastor was pretty awesome, and we just loved celebrating this special season with our church family.  Side note just for me, we did not make it through the entire service.  I was sweating trying to keep all 4 children still and quiet, and I think I used my bag of tricks up a little too soon, so we hung out in Daddy's office for the remainder of the service, ha!  We do Santa at our house.  That can be kind of controversial among some believers.  We read a great article by Mark Driscoll about the very subject, and if I can find it, I will add a link to it for you.  For us, Santa is the sprinkles on the sundae.  Not necessary, you can definitely do without it, but it sure does make it fun!  Our children know without a doubt that Christmas is about Jesus, period.  I am thankful for this head knowledge they have.  Oh, how I long for their hearts to make the connection, too.  

Christmas morning, I think we were up around 730 or so, not too early.  We always make the children wait on everyone before running in to the den.  Here's Carter Christmas morning.  

This picture does not do it justice, but Summer and Tilly were so. much. fun. to watch on Christmas Day.  They were excited about everything!  I loved watching their little faces gleaming with excitement.  

Story snagged some one's Reese's pieces early on, and she didn't care about much else the rest of the day.  She was just content with her candy!  

Here's a sweet picture of Tilly.  She is smiling here because she got her "very own Barbie." Translated to mean, one that she does not have to share with her sisters, ha!  We had a wonderful Christmas.  During nap time, David and I prepared an awesome Christmas meal.  We had baked ham, sweet potato souffle, green beans, cranberries, rice casserole, and rolls.  Delicious!  I failed to take any more pictures, even ones of us as a family.  I will have to do better next year.  

I do have one more memory to share.  Our tree.  Oh, our tree.  You might remember our earlier post about going out to the tree farm to pick out a tree and how we came away with two.  Thank goodness we got two.  Our big tree was so big, too big for our house.  It ended up undecorated in our foyer all the way up until Christmas Eve.  Lame, I know.  Christmas Eve David and I got the bright  idea to have Santa decorate the tree, so David and I put ornaments all around the front of the ginormous tree.  We even discussed how maybe that could become a tradition, to have Santa decorate the tree, maybe even in silly ways like using all the socks around our house that don't have a match!  We shall see!