Christmas

Well, I'm a bit late getting around to a few of these posts, so sorry for the Christmas overload in advance.

This year was really a great Christmas. Not only did the kids make it so much more fun, but it was really relaxing this year. After trying to think of why it wasn't as crazy or stressful, I boiled it down to a few things, so I thought I'd share them with you as more of a way to imprint them in my brain as a reminder for next year:

1. Advanced planning and preparation makes all the difference. Having all of the gifts bought by Thanksgiving, wrapped a week later, and put together before the 15th really allowed us to enjoy the holiday.
2. Keeping the true meaning of Christmas forefront in mind helped me not worry about the little things that did or did not get done.
3. Not worrying about capturing everything on camera/video or getting the perfect shot.

This last one was more poignant the day of Christmas than anything else. Last year Jeremiah and I drove ourselves crazy running around trying to get the entire morning of Christmas on film (either video or camera) and this year we decided not to worry so much about it. Although we did keep the camera handy and snap a few shots, we found that what we really missed out on last year was seeing the joy and excitement of the kids opening presents because we were stuck behind the cameras. This year was a lot different and although I didn't get as many pictures, I feel like I gained a lot more being apart of the experience instead of trying to just record it.

So that having been said, here are a few of the pictures I did manage to get this year:

I realized I never took a picture of our tree this year, so thought I'd better put one of it on here. We decided to try out an artificial tree this year to see how we liked it versus the real tree we've gotten every other year since we've been married. The jury is still out on the verdict - so many pros and cons to both, we're still trying to decide which we like best!


Here are the gifts that Santa left this year. As you can see, 3 of the 4 members of our family wanted bikes. I decided that since I am 4 months pregnant and not supposed to be on a bike anyway, I'd forego that request this year. I bet you can't guess which bike is for whom!


The kids were thrilled with the bikes Santa left them. In fact, the stocking and sleds were pretty much thrown to the side as they examined their new bikes.


And here's a picture of both Zach and Hailey opening one of their presents. It was cute to see how happy and excited they were as they were opening their presents this year.



In all, it was a very fun day. We were also happy to have Nana, Papa, Aunt Kylie, and Uncle Jedd join us for lunch and even some games in the afternoon.

We had a wonderful Christmas and hope that all of you did too!