Merry Christmas!

We had a great Christmas, enjoying wonderful Christmas Eve and Christmas Day worship services as well as time together as a family.  We upheld all of our traditions: worship on Christmas Eve followed by setting out cookies for Santa and saying good-bye to Joe, our Elf on the Shelf; early Christmas morning checking out our stockings from Santa and then heading over to church for worship; hors d'oeuvre lunch and then opening all of the presents; naps all around and finally, steaks for supper! 

Noah received 6 different Lego sets with over 3400 pieces and he somehow managed to put them all together in less than 24 hours!  Despite the building frenzy, he did find time to eat and sleep some in that 24 hours as well.  :)  To his credit, he hasn't mentioned the "b" word yet!  ("bored")  School is still a few days away though! 

Josiah loved opening presents, though he was very upset that we didn't stop to play with every toy once it was opened.  He didn't want to move on to the next gift - he wanted to PLAY with the one he had opened.  By the time everything was open, he had figured it out and wanted to help Michael & I open our gifts.

It was a good Christmas for Michael & I as well - Michael got a Carhartt coat & overalls AND a racing weekend to see the NASCAR race of his choice in 2012.  I finally got my porch swing and hope that with the "warm" winter weather we're having, Michael will soon put it together!  :)  We got lots of other nice gifts as well - as I said, we had a GREAT Christmas. 

Our best gift?  The gift of our Savior, who came to this sinful world as a baby in a manger, lived the perfect life that we cannot, died on the cross for all sin and rose again on the third day, just as he promised!  Praise God for blessing us with the gift we need: salvation!

Lots of fun pictures this week, so enjoy!

Christmas 2011