Christmas 2015

It's Christmas morning, I'm sitting here in my bed trying to get my pics off my phone and into my computer so I can make space for lots of pictures this morning.  Seriously technologically challenged!!!  My house is quiet.  Keith has already been to the hospital and is on his way home, trying his best to beat our earliest riser.  Its 7:54am.  Here's to a little more silence so I can reflect on this season.  My life is so full.  So blessed.  Thank you, God!!  I used to remember throughout my childhood my mom getting teary eyed during church, especially the Silent Night on Christmas Eve.  I never really got it, but man do I now.  It doesn't even have to be Christmas Eve in the darkness trying to sing the words to Silent Night past the lump in my throat.  It can be most any Sundays.  I look at these two little faces, these gifts that God has given me, his children to watch over on this Earthly Home.  My heart is full, and I have so much to be grateful for.  So much.

 

While we are on the subject of gifts.  God's gift to us - Jesus Christ.  God's gift to Keith and me - our Kirby and Susanna Rose.  It's so hard in our totally commercial society to teach my children the importance of GIVING gifts during Christmas.  We aren't just receiving gifts and ripping through paper on Christmas morning.  I took the kids shopping for each other and for Keith.  Kinda like icing cookies, I really wanted to wrap everything myself and have it all appear under the tree like magic.  It is just so much faster that way.  But I took a moment to think about the joy of giving and asked them to wrap their presents for each other and Keith.  Kirby actually asked me to "back off" and wanted to do every second of it himself.  From start to finish (picture him wielding scissors and trying to tear tape but it just kept sticking to itself, please).  I think this was my sweetest Christmas moment thus far.  The concentration on his face.  The intention.  The joy when he was all done with it.  It looks like hell, but it is possibly the most beautifully wrapped present I have ever seen. 

We scrambled of course to get ourselves ready for mass, which Susanna Rose slept through in entirety - Thank you Jesus!  She woke up just in time to come home, snap a few pics, eat a delicious Christmas Pasta dinner and pumpkin cheesecake dessert, get a hot bath, open up some Christmas jammies, watch Frosty, leave cookies out for Santa and reindeer food for the reindeer.  It was a whirlwind of an evening.  One reading of Twas the Night Before Christmas and prayers, and these little angels were dreaming of Sugar Plums.  That's when Keith and I got faaaast to work.

Excited for Santa.

First gift of Christmas....

Christmas Jammies!!!!

Magic reindeer food. The glitter in the oatmeal will glisten in the moonlight so the reindeer can find our house.

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So, around 9:15 Keith and I discussed whether or not we should wake the kids up.  And the morning was just as fast as Christmas Eve...so fast I don't think I snapped a single picture during the gift opening that isn't just a blurry streak. Kids went straight for their stockings.  Susanna Rose was over the moon excited about the candy canes in her stocking and on the tree.  Unlike I used to do as a kid, the kids went straight for their stockings.  They seemed to have overlooked the gifts from Santa in front of the fireplace.  Kirby was pumped about his double trailer, and then he discovered his giant excavator (please picture him swooping his arms up over his head and back down as he dramatically says "giiiiiaaaannnttttT" excavactor).  We took our time opening our gifts from each other, going one gift at a time and thanking each other and deliverying our gifts to each other.  It was just so simple and sweet and magical.  It took a while for Susanna Rose to warm up to her baby doll and stroller that Santa brought her, but soon enough she was pushing her around and named her "Strawberry."

 

We headed home to Nashville to spend a week with our family where we were showered with gifts and most especially with love and laughter. 

Keith and I rang in the new year with his high school buddies with mass and then even an eighties cover band that was sooo much fun. Thanks, mom and dad for watching the kids and celebrating New Years with them, complete with banging on pots and pans and all!!! 

And we headed back home to get back to the routine...soon it will be time to take down all the beauty of this season, but I will always keep the sweet memories in my heart and cherish them always.  I just hope to never, not once forget the sweet innocent moments of these babies.  Like I hope I never forget that today is January 4th, almost two weeks after Christmas, and Kirby was telling me today that he thought he saw Rudolph's nose in the clouds.  So sweet and so innocent and so excitable.  Here's to another big year and another big Christmas next year.