Christmas - part 1

We were very excited for Christmas this year. We had been doing quite a bit throughout the month of December to prepare for Christmas, including more cookie decorating at a friend's house.

We also did a walking tour in our neighborhood with friends to look at Christmas lights.

On Tuesday after I got off work, we headed up to Chris' family's house to begin our Christmas holiday.

We decided to try ice skating on Wednesday. Eleanor had been talking about wanting to go ice skating since she saw the ice skating show at Christmas Town this year, and our siblings seemed to also be interested. My brother came out to show Eleanor the ropes and much to my surprise, she loved it. I thought she'd be out on the ice for less than 5 minutes before deciding it was too cold/slippery/whatever and want to get off. She was out there for over an hour and a half, and kept wanting to go back out!

Thursday was Christmas Eve and we spent a lot of the day relaxing, baking some cookies, and then decorating them.

We went to a Christmas Eve service at Robert and Joanna's church in Fairfax. Jane unfortunately cried much of the time, but oh well!

Eleanor picked out cookies to leave for Santa and then headed to bed, after which we had a family caroling session in the living room, which Eleanor escaped her pack and play around 10:30 pm to join...yikes.

Christmas morning was lots of fun. We opened gifts, ate breakfast, and had a relaxing morning. Eleanor's favorite activity was opening, repacking, and reopening her stocking...a grand total of about 8 or 9 times that morning. Jane slept much of the morning.

We also had to say a special goodbye to Auntie Jessie who just left this week for 6 months in France. Lucky girl!! We are going to miss her but we pray that she has way too much fun to miss us!

We had a great time and loved all the family togetherness! A little later in the early afternoon we headed to my family's house to celebrate Christmas with them...