Mom Moments: Christmas Celebrations

We love Christmas! It's a time of celebrating the great love that God has for us and for reflecting on the joy and blessings he continues to give us each day. While we do include presents and Santa Claus in our celebration of Christmas, we try to help teach Addison about the real reason that we have Christmas. It really helps that they also reinforce this as school. We had a great time leading up to Christmas reading about the birth of Jesus in her Bible and we read this again as a family and had a time of prayer before we opened our gifts to each other at home before traveling home to Greenwood for the actual Christmas holiday.

We also talked with her about sharing gifts with other little boys and girls who don't have Christmas presents when we bought some for children at the Children's Attention Home. We asked her also if she could clean out some of her old toys to give to some boy or girl who didn't have a lot of toys and make room for her new toys. She's pretty sly, and so she figured out that if she wanted something new when we were out shopping, she would say, "Can I have this and I want to give away my [old toy] to a boy or girl who doesn't have any toys." One of my favorite things that she did this Christmas was to ask for toys for Peyton every time she sat on Santa's lap.

The only thing she really asked for this Christmas (besides picking out everything she saw in a sale paper or store) was a big Disney Princess castle she had picked out for Nanda and Pippy to give her. As it got closer to Christmas, we realized that was the only thing she had asked Santa for too. So, Santa left her a nice little note about not having room for it in his sleigh and asking Nanda and Pippy to get it for her. She loves it and was proud to show off the letter that Santa left for her.

Enjoy a bunch of great pictures of our wonderful celebrations this Christmas.