Christmas

We camped out in the living room on the eve of Christmas Eve (Christmas Adam as our VA friends call it). We had popcorn and watched the Polar Express. Poor Belen had a really bad cough. Darin was kind and gave up his spot on the bed to her, while he slept on the couch. I didn't get much sleep that night with Belen kicking around and coughing in my face, but here's to the tradition!

 Darin and I were dying when we looked over to see Shae stuffed to the max with his stuffed animals under that blanket.

 We made our presents to Jesus during Family Home Evening the Monday before Christmas.

 The kids were very excited when the door bell rang and they found their Christmas jammies from Mrs. Claus on the porch. 

  We read through and acted out the nativity story from the Bible. 

 

 I just love Christmas Eve so much. The calm before the storm. The anticipation and excitement. All the traditions and intentional family time. I honestly just love it all so much more than Christmas day when everything comes to an end.

I felt so much gratitude and love this year. We have SO much. We are insanely blessed with amazing friends and family. We felt so so lucky to get to spend Christmas with Darin's mom, whom we hadn't seen in almost a year and a half. We had a lot of opportunities present themselves over the past few months which allowed us to earn gift cards for different reasons which really helped support our Christmas. A week before Christmas, a friend was getting rid of her daughter's doll house, and even though we already had presents all set by that point, I grabbed it for the kids. It made things feel a bit excessive, but it was also so fun to see the kid's excitement on Christmas morning.

 

 Opening his pack of GX cards from Santa.

 

 Shae had his entire class help with his present to Ibu which was really sweet. Each kid got a square on this paper to write their name in and draw a picture. I loved that one of the kids put her phone number. 

 They each ended up getting each other Lego 2 movie lego kits for their sibling gift.

 They have been VERY excited about these new hats.

This BYU mini van shirt gave us all a good laugh.

 I had my anatomy scan for the baby just a week before Christmas. We decided to keep the gender hush hush until Christmas morning when the kids opened this box to discover that we are having a baby sister.

     When the 4 year old tries to set up the self-timer. 

Darin was man of the kitchen on Christmas and cooked us up a delicious ham dinner. We had our sweet neighbor/landlady over and a couple from our ward. I was definitely exhausted by the end of the day (I'm like a little kid and can't sleep on Christmas Eve, and then there was that awful night's sleep in the living room the night before), but it was a really beautiful Christmas :).

We sure did love having Ibu here for a little over a week and loved spending Christmas with her. We sure are missing her already.