Christmas at Home

This year we were home for Christmas. It was great! We really loved being a family of 4 but I definitely felt a little bit of emptiness not being with the rest of our family. There has been so much going on the past few weeks that I really am not sure what all to blog about. So, I thought I would start here and we'll just see what happens :-)

On Christmas Eve I worked during the day. Since we were going to be home I decided to help out at work so the other therapist scheduled to work wouldn't be there all.day.long. Then once I got home we headed to a local Christian Church for their Christmas Eve candlelight service. Whenever we are in Indy for Christmas Eve we really like to go to this service. It is such an encouragement and really a nice way to focus in on the birth of Jesus. I always leave so full of peace and so refreshed. This year was no exception. The message focused in on Luke 2:14, "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men on whom his favor rests." So much significance in those few words that is working to guide me as I make my 12 resolutions for 2012! Yep, you read that right - 12! But, I'm only working on 1 a month. It's just how I'm going to roll this year!!! Anyway, back to Christmas Eve........after the service we headed home and started a fire and enjoyed our living room while we read from the Bible about the birth of Jesus and had our traditional reading of The Night Before Christmas!

We make our Santa cookies (but we kind of cheated this year since I worked that day)!

We worked on getting a picture in the kids Christmas PJ's but we ended up running crazy all over the living room instead!

Jack went to sleep faster that night than he has in a LONG time!!! He was so excited about the morning and knew that Santa couldn't come until he went to sleep!

Sunday morning Jack woke us up at 6:30 but we managed to hold him off from going downstairs until Tatum woke up at 7:15. We headed downstairs to find that Santa brought each of them 1 toy. Jack got his long awaited Bat Cave and Tatum got a fun ball poppin' toy that she really enjoys!

We checked out our stockings and enjoyed looking at everything. Then, it was time to open presents from each other. Jack got some plush Angry Birds from Tatum and Tatum got My Pal Violet from Jack.

And, from us........Jack had several packages to open to find out that we are going to Disney World!!!!!

We are now down to only 4 days but at that point it was 14 days! He is super excited!!! I am sure that if Tatum could be excited she would be too :-) Chris and I also had a few small gifts from each other and from the kids but seriously - Disney kind of took all the budget this year!!! Ha!

After eating a delicious breakfast casserole we got ready to head to church. We enjoyed a nice service at church that morning and headed home where we had a light lunch before putting the kids down for their naps. After nap time we headed over to the Stoops' House where we had been invited for Christmas Dinner!

Rana and Phillip were so gracious to invite us to join their family and we felt right at home. When family isn't around - it's so good to have such good friends to share happy moments with! Rana and her dad made some awesome beef strogonaff (I do not know how to spell that) for dinner and that made me feel right at home because that is what my mom used to always make on Christmas Eve! Jack had a great time playing with their daughter Annise and her cousins!

We then went home and crashed into bed. It was a perfect day!