Christmas Morning

First, MERRY CHRISTMAS!!

We hope your day is filled with joy and remembrance of the greatest gift of all, God giving his Son to become human and live on this earth. May we not get lost in the glitzy wrapping paper and lose sight of an eternal perspective.

It is hard to believe that last year at this time on Christmas Day we were in the pediatric ER in Winston-Salem and Sara ended up staying in the hospital for a week. We are blessed with God's provision and Sara's now great health with an edited diet.

We woke up to Kacy informing us that Santa had brought her a dollhouse and Sara a baby doll. She was quite excited. Sara pattered in right behind her. The difference was that Sara was still mostly asleep and wanted to climb in bed with Mommy & Daddy to sleep some more. However, she overcame her sleepiness when she went outside to check out the tree and Santa's gifts.


Stockings were the first order of business...


This dollhouse is huge! It's taller than Kacy or Sara.


Kacy picked out a very special bouquet of flowers for Mommy. She chose the paper, bow and flowers totally herself, with a small amount of guidance by her Daddy. The truth is that she didn't really agree with some of Daddy's recommendations and did her own thing anyway... :) She was very proud of her gift and rightfully so...they were very beautiful.


Sara really didn't remember any of this from last year so this whole wrapping paper and gift thing was pretty cool.




A big hit was the flying fish game. The fish plays music and blows paper "fish" out of the tube and the kids have to catch them with the nets. They absolutely love this game.


And Kacy led Sara in proper photo posing during breakfast.


Then we had the opportunity to chat with our families on the computer.


So far, so good. It has been fun. Now off to dinner and more games with friends and family that are still around.

Christmas Eve

After the CIC Christmas Eve service, we were off to make pizzas. Laura and I had been discussing what kind of Christmas Eve tradition we could have with Sara's gluten-free diet. We decided on pizza because it can be done gluten-free and can be fun to make your own pizza.




Before we left, we had an animal menagerie thanks to Sam's Christmas gifts of winter hats for the kids. This was perfect for their hide-n-seek adventures.


And we attempted to end the night with new pajamas, as has been our tradition.

And then, Sara had a warning for Daddy about Santa's cookies. The video is a little dark in color but still pretty funny.

The Christmas Puzzle

Here is our video of putting together our new Santa Claus puzzle...

Setting up the Christmas Tree

We actually setup the Christmas tree before Kacy's birthday and Darren left for Hong Kong over Thanksgiving. Kacy & Sara loved it. They got hot chocolate and had all kinds of fun at our apartment and Grandma & Granddaddy's house putting up decorations.



We aren't really sure if Sara put more decorations up or took more down.



We had a pumpkin still good from the fall so we baked some seeds. We told Sara she couldn't feed them to Yoda, so she took one for herself and began feeding them to her new "pets," Hayley & Kacy.

A Snowy Day

We got a cold day at the beginning of December and even got some fun snow flurries. Here is Kacy & Hayley out on the lawn with a little snow falling.


Here is Sara with her backwards mittens...


Here is Sara with her best buddies from the ELC that she tours around with, Youngsook and Ruthie.

The New Bed

Our kids have always been good sleepers...we're not sure what happened about 3 weeks ago but Sara decided she did not want to sleep in her room by herself. Seriously, there was no convincing her. It is painful for several nights in a row. We had been talking about moving her in with Kacy but it was just talk with no definite plans.

So on a Monday night, she pitter pattered out of her room...stopped...looked up at Daddy and tottered off to Kacy's room. She crawled up in Kacy's bed. Kacy was basically asleep but woke up long enough to say, "If you're a squiggly worm, you are getting kicked out of my bed." They both promptly went to sleep.

So on Tuesday, we got a bed from Laura's parents which enabled us to create "bunk" beds for the girls. And everyone has been much happier! We haven't worked through all our sleep issues but we're making serious progress.



And here are the girls sleeping in their new beds...