Christmas with our Family of 4

There's no such thing as too much Christmas, right? Well, our family took a vote, and that's what we decided! :) Even after celebrating an early Christmas with the Schleichers in Nebraska and knowing that we were headed to Albuquerque for a Walquist Christmas, we thought it'd be fun to have a small family Christmas celebration of our own.

Prior to Thanksgiving, we decorated our home for the celebration of our Savior's birth. Jason's youth group was having a "Christmas decorating crews" fundraiser this year. Anyone from our congregation could sign up to have 2 youth help make his/her home look festive for the holidays. 

With two little ones running around, our time for big at-home projects is always at a minimum. We jumped at the chance to have helpers this year. Rachael and Nicolena were awesome workers! They were efficient and yet perfectionistic (wanting to get the fluffing of the tree just right). What a blessing to have their help! Our work was done in no time! 

Jaden and Cody, of course, supervised every step of the process. They LOVED looking at the lights on the tree.

When the time came for ornaments, however, their supervisory skills were a bit lacking... unless you call throwing ornament boxes around the room "quality control." Nicolena and Rachael were very patient with our little ones.

Daddy taught Jaden how to hang ornaments ON the tree.

Mommy and Cody put up a few decorations as well.

At one point, Jaden even hung up an ornament all by himself! Way to go, buddy! :)

Most of the time, though, he was much more interested in stuffing the ornament boxes into the tree.

Since we planned to be in Albuquerque for the week of Christmas, we decided to exchange our own family gifts on the Saturday prior to Christmas. We started off our gift-opening by sharing the story of Jesus' birth. Jaden and Cody loved the colorful pictures in this Bible we received from Grammy & Papa last Christmas.

Then, the boys excitedly pulled out their presents from under the tree.

Jaden was our expressive kid during the gift-opening. I'm not sure his pleased expressions are really in response to the gifts he received, but he sure made for some funny photos!

Generally, our boys were fairly careful with their gift opening and required quite a bit of guidance. Neither of them wanted to sit still long enough to open a whole gift.

Because we know that our boys don't quite yet understand the concept of gift giving & receiving, we stuck to just a few small gifts for them this year. They received bath markers, musical remote controls (that they wanted out of the packaging right away!)...

(They were a bit disappointed to discover that the remotes didn't actually work on our TV)

...and finally, a gift of tops.

This final gift was Daddy's idea, since he had seen the boys get a big laugh while attempting to spin their pacifiers on the ground. Right away, Daddy wanted to show the boys how the tops worked.

Daddy was right-- the boys LOVED watching the tops spin.

Daddy was probably just as excited as his little boys! 

Merry Christmas, little Cody and Jaden. What a joy it was to celebrate with you this year. You are God's BEST earthly gift to us!!