Christmas and all things in December

Christmas is such a special time for our family. We love it and it is so fun to celebrate with our sweet children. They look forward to it for a long time! We have some special traditions like the advent wreath, advent devotionals (our church even did a music advent CD this year! It was wonderful!), Christmas Eve services, and so many other things. It was a joyful season all around. It is such a special time to enjoy the time when we celebrate the birth of Christ.

We do some fun things during the season as well. We did gingerbread houses and gingerbread men. That was lots of fun!

 OK, so we are holding them backwards, but it was still fun!

 the children showing off their gingerbread men

All of us by the Christmas tree one morning before church

our snowman one December morning

Anna was in the cutest little preschool pageant in the world. 

(OK,I MIGHT be a little biased.)

She was Mary.

 We were all a bunch of sickies when G'pa and G'ma arrived to celebrate Christmas. Anna and Sam both fell asleep on the couch the first afternoon the grandparents arrived.

Later they woke up to enjoy a book with Grandma.

Then, all the sudden it was Christmas morning!

We do like to torture our children and make sure that we get a picture on the stairs before they come down to open their stockings!

 Stocking fun!

Samuel really wanted an umbrella hat for Christmas! He was so thrilled!

Christmas was full of joys this year, as we had both sets of grandparents here to celebrate and rejoice with us. (Bob and I were taking the pictures, so he is not in this one.)

Sarah was so thrilled to get a scooter from her Pop-Pop and Mom-Mom.

It was a wonderful Christmas and we thank God for these special times!