Jesus' Birthday

"Christmas is the spirit of giving without a thought of getting. It is happiness because we see joy in people. It is forgetting self and finding time for others. It is discarding the meaningless and 

stressing the true values. " - Thomas Monson

I love Christmastime every year, but this year, I truly enjoyed it. We got four days of non-work mode Matt and so much time together as our family of four. Emma is at such a fun (yet exhausting) age, that made Christmas even more exciting. 

Once we got our tree up, we kept with our tradition of the girls each getting a new ornament and a book. I love doing this and Emma was excited to add her new Doc McStuffins ornament. Note: it was clearly (not on purpose) a Doc McStuffins Christmas in our house. 

We recorded MANY holiday cartoons for the girls. I think we watched Charlie Brown Christmas daily, thrown in with some Mickey's Christmas. We tried to get Emma into Frosty the Snowman, but she didn't get into it until this week, of course. 

We celebrated Christmas with Matt's parents in early December due to his travel/work schedule. Ken and Dianne were able to come down for four days to celebrate and spend time with all of us. Emma could have been totally content (okay, maybe not) just handing out presents to everyone, she loved it! But she really loved opening presents....and not just hers. A couple times we had to tell her we needed to slow down. 

Learning to manage some self control

I really wanted to start a new tradition of spending the day baking with my mom, sister and the girls. I remember hearing so many special stories of my mom baking with her grandma growing and how much it meant to her and the memories she has from that time. This year, just Emma and I headed over to make some oreo balls, peanut butter cup cookies and frost a couple cookies. We went to the beat of Emma and her attentiveness (or lack there of) and short attention span. We knew we wouldn't get tons done, but the togetherness and the memories were worth it. I think we all had a blast and definitely looking forward to making this a yearly tradition.

Surprisingly, my mom only had to tell Emma about 100 times to stop touching her tree/moving ornaments. For some reason, she didn't do it too much at our house. Both girls loved having the tree lit up and Emma would request it be on if it wasn't. 

Christmas Eve day was spent laying low at home enjoying the white Christmas we were (surprisingly) getting before heading to church. We as usual, then went to my parents for dinner, family time and opening presents. 

Best caption we got of them in their Christmas jammies from Nana and Papa

We were careful of telling Emma that Santa was going to come to the house while she was sleeping knowing how the visit to Santa went. So we casually talked about it with her off and on. I don't think she necessarily grasped the concept, but she had fun putting cookies and milk out for him. 

In a Christmas miracle, both girls slept till 7 and we enjoyed seeing what Santa left for the girls. We spent the morning and afternoon nicely (and quietly) playing with our new toys and watching more Christmas cartoons. Matt taught Emma to say "Jesus' birthday" when we would ask her what today was or who's birthday it was. It was the sweetest thing and I could listen to her say it over and over. 

I had to.  

Finishing out the day, we headed back over to my parents for dinner and opening of stockings. We were lucky enough to have my grandma Pinky join us for the day as well. 

We hope you and your families had as wonderful and blessed Christmas as ours did. It truly is magic seeing and living the holidays through a child's eyes.