Here's Bacon and I making my scarf at the Koch's-- He looks good in white.
Once we got home I had to run to Target to do some last-minute shopping/exchanging. Daddy helped the girls do their hair while I was gone.
Here's the girls ready for church on Christmas Eve (wearing their new dresses from Grandma)
The Main Event-- "Baby Jesus" made His debut under our tree on Christmas morning. Absolutely the best gift ever given or received is Jesus Christ and life in Him. Praise the Lord!
Here's the girls and I on Christmas morning-- they were delighted to find Baby Jesus under our tree and really loved looking Him over and talking about how Jesus looked a lot like our pretend baby when He was born, and grew up just like they are doing.
Checking out the stockings
The girls got lots of dress-up stuff this year (one of their favorite things). Here's Grace dressed up like a bride. She talks about getting married all the time. A couple of months ago Grace sat Jim down and in a serious tone broke the news to him, " Daddy, someday Jesus is going to bring me a husband and I'm going to get married and I won't belong to you anymore."
We could tell that Pate had a keen sense of fashion from an early age...
Having the holiday to chill as a family was awesome! Here's Jim taking some down time to look at a preliminary plan for our future house. Bacon looks over the details. (You'll notice he looked over the details of my scarf in the above picture too... OK, he doesn't care about details. He just loves to snuggle. Basically, if you sit down in our house, you are going to get pugged.)----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Christmas was SO awesome this year! We hung out together a lot, and it was such a special time to get to start/continue some of our traditions and just be "us" together on a holiday. We went to our church's candlelight service on Christmas Eve, then came home, had some "Christmas Slush" (mmm), then we read the Christmas story together and sang Christmas carols until past the girls' bedtime. I played the guitar, and the girls and Daddy danced- a lot. Their favorite part of "dancing" is having Jim pick them both up and spin really fast. He got crazy dizzy, but he's such a rock star Daddy, he did it again and again. We told the girls the story of St. Nicholas and how he loved Jesus and loved others, and Grace really remembered it. (Making the stockings fun and meaningful the next morning.) They loved the suprise of seeing a baby Jesus under the tree and thought it was really special to get to see and hold him. That was probably the most special part of the holiday for me. The doll is really life-like and it was such a tangible heart-reminder of the center of Christmas' meaning. It really got to me. Patie is especially captivated by it, too. It was so special to have something so lifelike to help them see how Jesus really was, and they can touch him and rock him and think about it all. (We make him special though, they can't touch the doll unless we're with them, so he's not just another toy.) This will be one of my favorite traditions, I think.
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