Merry Christmas!

This Christmas was special.
With a husband in the military, we have experienced not having hubby/daddy home for Christmas before.  I think having that experience makes us feel even more thankful that we are all together, because we know that so many families did not have that this year.
And even better, Chris had a long vacation off of work. 
And we got to celebrate Anna's first Christmas.
And the kids are still totally into leaving out cookies and milk for Santa, and trying to stay awake to be able to see him.  We do keep Christ as our main focus of Christmas, but we have a little fun with the whole Santa thing as well.

Christopher wanted to stay up and watch for Santa from the stairs but we told him that he wouldn't come if any kids were watching.
So he wanted to set our video baby monitor up so they could watch on that.  Silly boy.  Santa won't come until all kids are asleep.

So the children all nestled all snug in their beds; While visions of sugar plums danced in their heads. 

And we gave them a 7 o'clock in the morning curfew that they had to stay in bed until.  And when I was all set up with my video camera and trusty Canon, they broke loose...

And when the boys remembered that they were hungry, we had our traditional breakfast.

And then Princess Anna decided she'd had enough sugar plum dreams, and she wanted to come down and see what this Christmas thing was all about.

Leah showed her how her ball toy worked.  She wanted to make sure it got played with correctly and didn't think Anna would do a good enough job.  We had to convince her to share.

Her daddy showed her how the whole unwrapping thing worked. She wasn't awake enough yet to understand why, for the past month we told her 'no' whenever she touched the presents, but now we want her to take the paper off. Is this some sort of trick?

Ball?  Paper?  Meh...either one is fun to chew on.

So we thought that taking a quick Christmas pajama picture of all the kids wouldn't be too much to ask.  With five kids?  One of them has to be crying.  (It was Anna that made Leah cry!  Look at that little smile on her face!)

Droid phone, Gators cups and a remote control helicoptor.

 New Bible with cover and a monthly massage gift certificate.

We tried to get a photo of the kids with their 'joint gifts' before Anna escaped.

My favorite 'gift' this Christmas for our family...a little boy from Myanmar that we are sponsoring through World Vision.  I walked into Family Christian store one day and knew it was the perfect gift.  I waited until Chris could go back with me and we picked out a child together.  Chris had to research Myanmar/Burma for work and knew how awful the conditions in that country are because of the government.  Christopher's favorite missionary from our missionary studies last year was Adoniram Judson who went to Myanmar.  This boy is Christopher's age and we are excited to be able to bless his community and to correspond with him through letters and pictures.  We would like to eventually be able to sponsor five different children that are the same ages as our children. 

Aside from all of the pretty wrapping paper and shiny bows and piles of new stuff, we want our children to remember that it's something else that makes Jesus' gift of life so special.  It's loving Him, and loving others, that is the reason for His birth and for this Christmas celebration.

I hope you had a wonderful, loving Christmas!