Christmas Joy

We hope everyone had a Merry Christmas! We certainly had a wonderful time. We are so very blessed this year. Everyone is relatively healthy and we were surrounded by our family for both Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. Everywhere we look people seem to have large smiles on their faces and we certainly have felt the spirit of the season this year.

In holding with our Christmas tradition, we went to Church with my parents. Emma loves going to Church and Christmas was no exception. She was SO HAPPY to see everyone at church. It was very crowded with people and Emma shined her smile on everyone! Her smile is infectious and it seemed to me that her smile certainly brightened the day for everyone who saw her at church. After mass we headed to my parents house and everyone had a lot of fun as we ate, played, visited with Santa, sang Christmas carols and opened presents.

Julia was very excited about Baby Jesus' birthday and she sang Happy Birthday as we placed him in our nativity. This year seems to be magical for Julia. She understands more about Jesus' birth story and often tells Emma the story with help from her First Christmas book. It is so cute! She also helped me gather some food for the food bank and presents for the toy drive for those less fortunate than us this holiday season. She is starting to understand how lucky we are to have so much and she has such a generous, giving heart that selecting toys and food for those less fortunate made her very happy.

We also talked about Santa this year, but since Julia is still a bit *terrified* of Santa our focus stayed on Baby Jesus. However, she was so excited on Christmas morning to see everything Santa left for her and Emma. It was so cute! She told me that Santa Claus must know her very well since he knew just what she would like - he brought her so many things that she just loves!

As for Emma, she was a bit wiped out on Christmas morning and would probably have slept late if we didn't wake her to check out the presents with Julia. She seemed to like most of her gifts, but headed off for a nap pretty quickly so she could rest up before we headed off to Chris' family for Christmas dinner and lots more fun!

We wish you a very Merry Christmas as you celebrate this wonderful time of year!