Christmas Eve Festivities

Annual fam pic before Christmas Eve services at church...
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It was so special to worship together this year with the Links and Pierces. The Pierces and friends opened the service with my favorite rendition of Little Drummer Boy. Merry Christmas to me. :)
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The kids went up for fun childrens' time and all got their own set of jingle bells (that rang for the rest of the service, ha!).

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B got cool pics of the kids watching snow come down from the ceiling. They didn't stay put long...had to chase it! So fun!

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Afterwards, we went out for some Christmas Eve dinner with the Pierce fam. It was great except for Gehrig starting to feel bad while we were there. He laid in my lap in the restaurant and fell asleep! When he woke up, we realized that he was burning up with fever! :(

We picked up some meds for him and got home to open up our Christmas pjs.

We kept telling G he needed to get to bed to rest and feel better, but he wouldn't hear of it. He insisted on our plan to go see lights in our pjs, so we rested for a little while until the fever broke.

Then he felt fine, silly boy! We stayed close to home and had lots of fun...so glad we went!

After the children were nestled all snug in their beds with visions of sugarplums dancing in their heads, we started on Greer's wooden kitchen. Oh. my. word. It came in two boxes of the smallest pieces you could imagine! Thankfully, engineer Pots showed up as reinforcement.

Mammaw and I cheered on from the couch.

Finally we were all ready to go...about 1:30am! We snuck in to give G some more medicine for his fever and crashed!! Now we see why parents pray for their kids to sleep in on Christmas morning!! :)

First Christmas This Year

Merry Christmas!!

Our friend, Kim (www.kimberlykylephotography.com) took family pictures for us a few weeks ago and we love them! She also put together our Christmas card above. She does amazing work! To see the rest of the pics, see the gallery on the right. Thanks, Kim!!

Merry Christmas Eve!

She Makes Me Laugh

Christmas Fun

I'm not sure how this has happened (or how to make it happen again!), but we have been less busy this Christmas season than ever before. It has been wonderful and we have loved spending lots of family time celebrating Christmas. It's been fun to try to do something Christmasy every day...here's a recount of this week so far!

A local church put on a hayride through the life of Christ. They did a great job of telling His story and presenting the gospel while entertaining all ages. Gehrig loved it and had lots of questions about each scene..."Is that the REAL John the Baptist??" etc. It brought so many of the Bible stories that he's heard to life. It was free and close to home too...sounds like a new tradition!

We got to make cookies for our sweet neighbors. While B stayed home, the kids and I delivered them. When we got home, Gehrig said, "Dad! You should come with us next time...it's really fun!"

The Pierces came over for some fun visiting...the kids watched a few minutes of some Christmas movies and then just enjoyed playing and eating cookies. They are so cute... :)

After we put Greer to bed that night, the boys and I watched "The Nativity Story." It told the story better than I've ever seen and was beautifully done. Gehrig asked questions throughout the whole thing that led to great God discussions...some harder than others to explain! (Circumcision?!) We all came away with a better focus and understanding of the whole reason we do Christmas! So glad that Greer's Ms. Windy passed it on to us.

Another night, we went to Lights of the South. It was COLD!! The kids squealed with delight and amazement through the whole ride. The woman next to us said, "I sure wish I was that excited!" ...which could be translated, "Wow, they are loud!" :)

Yesterday was party day at school. Gehrig's class had some live Christmas carols...

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Awesome snowman treats...

Cute crafts...

Fun games...

And some Christmas storybooks. Those moms and teachers did a great job!

Greer was so excited to see her daddy at school!

Coming down off the sugar high! (But not enough for either of them to nap!)

And finally, last night, we rode around with the Watsons to look at Christmas lights.

(They begged us to take that picture of them! Not sure why. :))

There are a couple of houses in our area that coordinate their Christmas lights with music on the radio. You tune in to a certain station and watch from your car...it is so cool!

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Today, it's raining and we plan to stay in our PJs all day. Ahhh, Merry Christmas!!!