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.

Opening her present from the Mullis family

Little Princess Belle doll

Opening presents from Mommy & Daddy

Princess look and find book

Peyton got some too!

Camo hat

Little princess dolls

Telling Santa what to bring her and Peyton

Will on Santa's lap

Making gingerbread house at Nanda's

All done!

Merry Christmas Will!

The boys

Looks like little Santa doesn't want his picture made

Addison & her boys

Helping in the kitchen

Bry-Bry and cousin Emily

Peyton & Shar-Shar

La-La and cousin Emily

Peyton opening presents

Loves her movies!

Emily likes her new chair

Hanging out with Papa

Taking Jayden for a ride on her new Gator

Peyton playing with his new toy

Santa came to Nanda's house!

The princess castle!

The three grands

Will likes his presents!

Riding in Will's new wagon

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...

...okay, so it did when I took these pictures. It doesn't look like Christmas at our house anymore. You know I'm behind, as usual, but here's a glimpse of our pre-Christmas activities here at home.

This was the first year Addison was really old enough to help and she really enjoyed putting out all the decorations. She helped pick out where the Christmas village houses would go and picked out one for her room and one for Peyton's. She and Peyton got matching snowman ornaments with their name on them from me and Jason to add to the tree. She loved putting all the ornaments on and seemed to favor a few spots where about 10 ornaments ended up on 2 limbs. Such fun!

At first, she was very curious about the whole thing, asking repeatedly, "why are we putting the Christmas stuff up?" so I would tell her that it was almost Christmas. From then on, she would emphatically state "It's almost Christmas!" every day when we would look at the Christmas decorations. She was responsible for turning on the lights/decorations in the house and she took that job very seriously. She was drawn to the nativity set again this year. But instead of taking baby Jesus, she would take the manger instead and put it in her dollhouse so her baby could have a crib to sleep in. Sometimes baby Jesus make a visit to the dollhouse too. And the animals became family pets of the dollhouse family as well, so our nativity didn't exactly stay together all season long. And Peyton liked looking at the lights on the tree.

Peyton and the elf

Addison posing with the nativity set that she loves to play with, even
though she has a toy one to play with (of course).

Looks like some wild haired fairies have traveled from afar to worship baby Jesus too. 

Addison took this picture of our tree that she helped to decorate.

Addison took this picture of the angel on top of the nativity. She's got a good eye for photography!

Addison on her daddy's shoulders enjoying the Rock Hill Christmas parade (and popcorn)!

My big girl sitting with her friend Gracie watching the parade. She had so much fun with this sweet girl!

Posing in her Christmas duds in front of the outside Christmas tree

And with Mickey and Minnie who are mailing their Christmas cards.

Me and my little tiger man

Christmasville!

Bouncy house fun at Christmasville

Hanging out with her friend Aniston from school

She spotted Rapunzel a block away!

Picture with Santa & Mrs. Claus. She also got to ride the ferris wheel with Mommy and Preacher Jerry , Ms. Gail and their grandchildren, which she enjoyed but we didn't get any pics.

So, in this next set of pictures, Addison was in the Clover Christmas Parade with her dance academy. See if you can pick her out...she's the one SLEEPING on the trailer. Poor thing, she fell asleep while they were waiting and slept through the WHOLE PARADE and missed it! Needless to say, we didn't go to the other two that she was supposed to be in. What would be the point?

Addison and Daddy watching the rest of the parade go by after she woke up from her nap. I asked her if she had fun being in the parade and waving at all the people and she said yes. I guess her nap was fun.