Christmas 2012

Our Christmas celebrations started off with Jude & Selah's school Christmas program. The kids did so great, sang loud (so cute!) and said their verses into the microphone. My mama heart swelled. :) Their program only lasted about 20 mins but, it was 20 very sweet minutes. Jude was a Wise Man who put gifts into the manger, and Selah was an angel.

My mom came up and joined us for the program and when Jude walked into the program he said, "Hi Mom, hi Dad! Look, I have a gramma!" :) 

After the program we went home to have our little family birthday party for Benjamin. My mom came over to join the fun too!

Some Benj photos from today... (I posted more photos of Benj on my photography blog today)

Before Christmas we also went down to Corvallis to celebrate my Grandpa's birthday. Our kids are blessed by all the fun things to do at all of their Grandparent's homes and great grandparent's.

We made sure to drive through the Pepsi lights on our way home.

Christmas morning was a lot of fun. We celebrated with our family at home a couple days early because we were going to be out of town at other family's homes. 

Selah was so excited about Jude opening the gift from her (a delorean car from the movie Back to the Future.) She did a great job keeping lots of gift secrets. Both of the kids did! 

Jude loves to line things ups.

I shot a wedding the night before our Christmas, so matching pj's was not on the top of my priority list. ;)

Then we made our way to the Fegles house. 

The kids always have so much fun playing with Cousin Orion when we're all together. Grandma & Grandpa Fegles got all of the kids their annual Christmas pj's.

I had to post this funny shot of Benj as we were packing up to leave. 

Then we were onto my mom's house for Christmas Eve. 

Our kids know that Santa is a story (they know about Saint Nick and how he gave to the poor), so they know he isn't real, but they were still really excited to get to see him this year. My grandpa dressed up as Santa and came to bring toys. The kids each took turns sitting on his lap. :) Selah was onto him from the moment he walked in the door and said, "Hey! That's 'ol Papa!" but she still had fun with it. Here they are seeing him come through the door.

My mom and Wayne, along with the help of Granny & 'Ol Papa, made bunk beds, a table and chairs, a little store, etc. for the kids to play family. They loved it and it kept them busy.

My brother Matt and mom worked together to have all of Grandma & Papa's old 8mm videos put onto dvd's. My brother Matt then made a highlight video of all of their old footage, and we watched it twice. It was AMAZING! It totally made me cry. Great gift! If you want to watch it, you can click here to view it. My mom is the cute little girl you see in this video. My Papa here is the handsome man sometimes in his police uniform, my grandma is the cute little woman with dark hair, and then there's footage of my great and great-great grandparents, which I was blessed to know all of!

We ended our Christmas time in Corvallis with a visit at our friend's Matt & Jana's place. The kids love to play, and we adults always squeeze in a game of spades! We're excited to celebrate Christmas with my Dad & Janet this coming month!

This was a LONG blog post! I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and a Happy New Year!