Christmas with our Family

We celebrated Christmas early this year since Christmas Eve and Christmas Day are already so busy. I think we'll do the same thing next year... it was nice to just relax and enjoy Christmas with our girls. We gave our traditional "3 gifts of Christmas" like Jesus received. Hannah loved getting her beautiful dress-up dress and her jewelry box (which she calls a treasure box), but she was overjoyed to discover a new bike hidden downstairs. We all went downstairs together in search of her third gift. After she opened the storage room door and saw her bike she came running back to give me a huge hug and then she hugged Doug. It was too priceless... good thing we captured it on video.

Ava of course was more into the wrapping paper, tissue paper and bows than she was her gifts. I kind of figured this would be the case so we kept things pretty low key. We gave her "Chimes" the xylophone/piano, a panda outfit from Gymboree and a book called On the Day You Were Born. Hannah loved helping her little sister open gifts - in fact, I think it was Hannah who actually opened the gifts. :-)

Hannah and Ava also exchanged gifts with each other. Ava was delighted by the musical cell phone she got and Hannah loved her Doodle Doug (clever name). Doug was happy to receive some new clothes from me and the girls, a wallet and some cologne. I also received some clothes, jewlery and the season 2 DVD set for Beverly Hills 90210 (yes, I will admit that it's fun to relive life with the Walsh family and friends). Hannah and Ava also gave me some beautiful little birthstone charms that will go on a chain.

As part of our celebration we also read some books about the first Christmas. Hannah loves hearing about baby Jesus, Mary, and Joseph and can be heard telling the story herself. She also enjoyed acting out the stories of Advent and Christmas with her class at preschool. Although Ava had a hard time sitting still while we were reading, we know that this is just the start of hearing all about Jesus. Someday she too will come to know the story about her Savior being born in a lowly manger on Christmas morn.

We hope each of you and your families had a wonderful Christmas too!