Christmas ~ 2013

 We celebrated Christmas as a family on the evening of Christmas Eve, and we began our celebration with a wonderful candle lit service at church.  Love!

We ate Chinese food for dinner (tradition ~ mom does no cooking!) and then read the entire story of Jesus from the Bible, from prophecies of his coming in the Old Testament, to the fulfillment of those prophecies in the New Testament.  Each of the children and my husband took turns reading.  We always read from my Grandpa's Bible on Christmas Eve, and it is so wonderful and poignant to see his writing all over this Bible.  How he loved God's Word!

Little Man needed help with a few words, but otherwise did great!  He is named after my Grandpa who previously owned this Bible, and I pray that Little Man will always love it as his namesake did.

Little Man had a very limited budget for his Christmas shopping, so he got one present for the whole family.  I love this picture of his face ~ he had high anticipation as everyone opened it together.... a new game of SkipBo!  (it has been played many times since that night!)

New legos!  Hobbit inspired. :)

I am absolutely and utterly in love with this lego Hobbit hole set!  The details and accessories on the inside of this little house are so.... cute.... I have been seen playing with it myself.  I told my boys that I want a Hobbit hole in our backyard, and I am only half joking. ;)

New camera!

Peacock picture that daughter G painted for daughter H's new bedroom.

New canvases and other art supplies!

Daughter H was super excited to receive a new wireless speaker for her room that syncs with her phone.

Hero factory.

New scarves and clothing gift cards.

Daughter G gave son G this monkey hat, and daughter H gave him the new Lions shirt.  Happy boy!

New guitar case for son G, and new bass guitar for son L!

On Christmas morning we had our traditional opening-of-the-stockings-on-mom-and-dad's-bed, and then...

...brunch at Grandma's house where she gave each of the grandchildren a new ornament to add to their personal collections.

My hubby gave me a new paper white Kindle which I love!  Great features, a definite upgrade to my first Kindle which broke over a year ago.  I have pretty much been reading non stop since Christmas!

It was a wonderful couple days of celebrating Jesus' love for us, and our love for one another!