Christmas Pictures

Better late than never, right?

Our Christmas Eve dinner: sparkling juice, cheesy potatoes, steak tips, green been casserole, and homemade dinner rolls...the best Christmas Eve dinner we have had yet! (I also made peanut butter cup cheesecake, but I didn't realize it had to be in the refrigerator overnight...oops!! It was still AMAZING when we ate it later)

Our tradition is to open stockings on Christmas Eve...Titus was pretty excited about his Thomas and James trains, and Damaris was excited about her horses (in fact, that is exactly what she is saying as a took this picture...)

On Christmas morning we made homemade doughnuts - chocolate, glaze and cinnamon/sugar. They were really good! Then we read the Christmas story out of their children's Bible before opening presents. I think these things will become some of our new traditions.

Titus loves his new tractor, games, and especially his new train!

Damaris loves her new stables and fence (that Stephen made!) for all her horses. Stephen and I saw these backpacks when we were gone for our anniversary, and thought it would be cute to get Damaris one with her name on it since her name is pretty unique.

We actually decided to go slowly and make the kids take turns opening. When we did presents earlier, it was completely chaotic, no one knew what anyone else was getting, and we didn't want the kids to rush through gifts again. I guess you just have to learn as you go sometimes! It worked out better than I thought, and I hope to continue this in the future!

We also tried something new for Titus...we want our kids to learn that Christmas is not about getting gifts, it is about the greatest gift of all - Jesus! We wanted him to learn to give to others. At first I was a little doubtful because when my office decided to do packs through World Hope for kids around the world that wouldn't get gifts, Titus threw a fit when I told him he couldn't have the candy, toys, and other goodies I put inside, even though I tried to explain...but maybe he just needed to know WHO he was getting gifts for...because we decided to give him a little money, and he did VERY well picking out gifts for our family. He bought little horses for Damaris, a Christmas CD for me (he may have had a little help from his Dad on that one! ;)), and car wash soap for Stephen. In fact, the soap was completely his idea...he told me he wanted to get Stephen "car shampoo" so that is what I helped him find! We started small with Damaris and only had her pick out something for Titus, and she surprised me as well. When I was in the toy isle and asked what she wanted to get for Titus, she immediately pointed to a little car. He loved it, too! I had a little bit of a proud mommy moment, and was glad that I thought of this idea. I am sure this will be a continued tradition as well!

The next day we headed to Michigan to spend some time with my side of the family...well, the roads were TERRIBLE...complete sheets of ice - so much so that a salt truck in front of us couldn't make it up the hill and slid off the road, a propane truck almost slid off a 6 foot drop off and into a pole, semis were parked off to the side every time there was a hill (and they are not exactly large in Indiana!!) because they couldn't make it up them. My favorite part of the whole trip was seeing Amish kids literally ice skating on the main road. Too funny! With all the delays it ended up taking us 6 hours just to get to the state line - a trip that normally takes 2 hours!! The kids were pretty good considering that they were stuck in the car for over 8 hours...I was VERY happy to finally be done traveling! Here are a couple pictures I took:

The propane tank was WAY too close to our van! As it was sliding toward me, I just kept praying for our safety and the driver's safety...It would have been really bad if he had gone off the side. It doesn't look like it in this picture, but it was a pretty deep ditch!

A little Amish girl ice skating :)

And last picture, but not least, is a squirrel that randomly jumped on my parent's window. I have never seen a squirrel do this! It was too funny to not get a picture :)

Unfortunately that is all the pictures I have...I didn't get pictures of my mom's side of the family or my dad's side of the family when we got together for parties, and I didn't get pictures of a couple of my friends from high school when we got together while I was home. I didn't get pictures of our New Year's Eve game night and service at the church either...I know, I am slacking in the picture department! And now, my camera is down for 4-6 weeks while it is in getting fixed (thankfully still under warranty, and my sister is letting me borrow her camera!!).

We really enjoyed our time over break - a nice balance between being busy and just being at home relaxing. This is only the second year in a row that IWU has given us the whole time between Christmas and New Year's and I LOVE it. I feel so much more relaxed and refreshed.

Anyway, I just keep rambling, so I will stop! Have a great weekend everyone!