Christmas Eve and Christmas Day

Christmas this year has been a blast. We've been able to spend a lot of quality time with family and have been able to do some fun things.

This year we spend Christmas day with Jen's side of the family, then headed up to see Seth's side of the family over New Year's and to celebrate Christmas again.

One thing I love about Christmas is all the different traditions each family has. This year, we tried something new and we may continue this tradition, if we can find the ingredients we need. We made "Manger Cookies"! They are just little no-bake cookies you make with peanut butter, butterscotch chips, Chinese noodles and marshmallows. So, it ends up looking like hay in the manger. We put Hershey's kisses in the middle of 2 of them to be baby Jesus. :o) So, on Christmas Eve, we had a quiet night in with Granny, Papa and Uncle Thom. We had our manger cookies, hot chocolate and watched a special on PBS about the town in Ireland where we will be living VERY SHORTLY!!

Sitting down to our picnic of manger cookies and hot chocolate

Never take a toddler's picture when they have food in their mouth - "CHEEEESEE!"

"Mmmmmmm!!"

On Christmas day, we all woke up and came downstairs for stockings (and coffee for Mom and Dad!). Thankfully our kids aren't at the age where they wake up at 3am to start their stockings, so we woke up at a relatively normal hour. Once we were all awake and could see straight, we got started with the festivities!

Cailyn modeling her new headband she got in her stocking

Hannah opening her stocking. Granny got the girls each one of those CD holders to hold the discs for their viewfinders for easy travel. Genius!!

One tradition I had growing up was reading the story of Christ's birth from the Bible before opening presents. This year, we decided to use a version from a children's book so the girls could get more out of it. It still amazes me when I take time to think about it that God would send His only Son to earth to die for the likes of me. Wow!

Daddy reading

Cailyn listening intently

Hannah enthralled in the book

It has been so wonderful to have these 3 weeks with our families after our time in Virginia, before flying overseas. We've gotten to spend lots of time with my brother, which we usually only get to see for a day or two once a year. We got to have a whole week this time!! The girls LOVE their Uncle Thom!!

Cailyn giving love to Uncle Thom (or "Uh Bomb" as she says)

Hannah getting a good cuddle from Great Grandpa

And let's not forget Daddy!!

After the story and all the love, it was the moment we'd all been waiting for - PRESENTS!! :O) Uncle Thom is a really creative, artistic kind of guy and he made presents for everyone this year, including the new CD from his Steel Drum group, Apocalypso. The album is called "MicroBurst" and it's AWESOME!! But he also made Hannah a new hat, since she'd outgrown the one he made last year. And Cailyn got a scarf!! Hannah's hat has since had ear flaps and tie strings added, we'll try to get a pic uploaded soon.

Modeling Uncle Thom's handiwork!

One special thing Hannah got to do while we were in VA was learn how to sew!! (Hannah and mommy both!) So, she made a special Christmas pillow for each of her grandma's. Granny's pillow had a music theme. You can see the instrument side in the pic below, and the other side has sheet music on it.

The girls each got a viewfinder with tons of discs to put in it. We're saving most of them for the plane ride next week!

Stay with us, as I will be doing LOTS of new posts today.