Early Christmas

Riley and I are still figuring out what kind of Christmas traditions we want to create with our kids. We always celebrate Christmas with our extended families since it's a guaranteed time of year to be with them, but it's also important to us that we (the four of us) celebrate consistently by ourselves, too. We'll be heading up North to see family soon so we went ahead and did our four-person family celebration on Saturday.
I feel like this is the first Christmas Ellie is beginning to grasp what Christmas is all about. We've played with her fisher price manger scene over and over, and we've talked about how her birthday is close to Jesus' birthday. As we sang Happy Birthday to Jesus this year she was "getting it." At church all the children had a birthday party for Jesus so I appreciated the reinforcement that brought. She helped me make gifts for other people this year, so we're getting a better idea of how to teach Jesus to our children.
I could go on and on, but I'll stop and get some pictures posted. Ellie's big gift this year was a camera and you can see from the expression on her face that she was ECSTATIC! Saedi's highlight was some hand instruments and a ball that I sewed for her. Riley got me a beautiful garnet necklace that my friend Nicole made and Riley was thrilled about a new book...go figure!