Oh, Christmas!

I love so many things about Christmas time.  I love the traditions.  I love the decorating.  I love finding the perfect gift for someone I love.  I don't love feeling like we made it through something difficult once Christmas is over.  The hard part is that everything we did was really fun, making it hard to figure out what to do differently next year.  But, we definitely need to do something differently.  On Christmas afternoon Abby was sobbing, saying "I just don't like my new toys.  They're boring.  Actually, I'm just so sad for those people we met this morning (more on that later).  Actually, I just don't know why I'm crying!"  Poor thing.  It was just too much.  Which shows me that we did not actually celebrate Christmas, because I don't think that celebrating the love of our Creator and the birth of our Savior would leave any of us feeling like that.

Okay, enough of that.  Onto the "our Christmas was so fun and wonderful" part!  As usual, Christmas started on Christmas eve for us, with a wonderful morning with Carey's family.  We had a delicious breakfast, opened gifts, and went outside to play.

Being tickled by Auntie Kelly

Seth immediately took his toolbox and tools downstairs to start "working"!

Abby had so much fun playing "batting" with daddy and Auntie Kelly

Haley and Seth loved the power wheels!

Christmas Eve night our church had a worship gathering and the kids got to sing "Away In A Manger" on the stage.  Haley and Abby were so excited about it.  Seth only wanted to do it if he could drum!

Christmas morning we woke up and did stockings and then made 20 something breakfast burritos!  We went to the worship gathering with our church (since Christmas was on a Sunday this year), with the kids looking so cute in their pjs!  Seth kept saying (loudly in the middle of the service) "I don't want to do Jesus birthday.  I want to open presents"!  Sounds about right for a 3 year old!

Abby helped me make quite a few of the burritos.

 After the service we met our friends, the Hughes, downtown Santa Cruz and handed out the aforementioned breakfast burritos to homeless people that were out and about.  It was really neat to take a minute to meet them, shake their hands, wish them a Merry Christmas, and let them know that God hadn't forgotten them.  We were able to pray with a couple of the people.  It was really special and we will definitely do that again next year.

That afternoon we spent time having a birthday party for Jesus and playing with new Christmas toys! 

Seth told me "but Jesus isn't here to blow out his candles, so we can"!

Christmas evening we went to my parents' house for a delicious Christmas dinner, prepared by good old Uncle Nate.  It was really fun to see Haley and Abby working so hard to crack crab legs and to watch Seth try and pick out the meat!  After dinner we did gifts and then flopped around the living room and watched Elf.