Christmas around here always sneaks up on me. I start shopping, planning, and celebrating months in advance of the big day but every year it seems I find myself on Christmas eve shocked that the time has come.
This year was especially fun now that Gabriel and Abigail are a little older. Gabe new what Christmas was and couldn't contain his excitement. He was quite the little helper in the kitchen, and put a great deal of energy into making special presents for family.
Abigail was in awe of the tree. Several times a day she would delicately touch the tips of the branches and say "Pretty tree". Then, once I wasn't looking, snatch one of the pretty ornaments off and go running. Sneaky girl.
Sadly, I think this will be our last year with a real tree. In my family, fake trees were sacrilegious, so the thought of owning one makes me feel like a traitor. I also relish going to the tree yard, the smell of the trees, going through at least a dozen until I find the perfect one. But as I am the only one in our house who enjoys the tradition (Trent tolerates my eccentric tree ladyness, and the kids could really care less), and this year our tree seemed to die fast, I figured we could try the fake tree thing.
Maybe I will just get a small real one for our master (ha, ha, ha I mean shoe box) bedroom. We'll see.
We spent the morning of Christmas at home, enjoying coffee, breakfast, and the fun of shiny new toys with intact parts. Nicholas was thrilled with his new Nintendo 3DS and kept marveling us with it's different features.
After Abigail had a morning nap, it was of to Grandmas to celebrate with Trent's family. That many people (5 adults, 1 teen, 3 kids, an infant, and a dog) in a Christmas present filled living room was crazy, but so much fun! As a Christmas present to my mother in law we all wore pj's. Beyond the materialistic, our gift to them was 5 bazillion homemade cookies. Well, maybe not that many but pretty close. Snicker doodle, no bake chocolate cookies, gingerbread men, and chocolate rolo cookies.
Overall, a blessed day of food, family, and a reminder that while our family keeps getting bigger we have plenty of crazy love to share.
