Christmas!

Christmas Eve night we were lucky enough to be visited by the big man in red. Santa left quite the spread under the tree!

The hubby also worked really hard in HIS workshop to build me my very own custom backdrop stand. It will be perfect for my tiniest clients that are all due this spring and summer! Oh how I can't wait to get some newborn photo shoots under my belt!

The whole scene. Hubby tried his best to get my gift under the tree. This was as close as he could get it! A+ for effort. 

A little Christmas Eve tradition that the hubby and I started this year {that I hope will stick} is to clean the house before bed on Christmas Eve. I cannot tell you how nice it was to wake up on Christmas morning to a sparkling clean house. All we had to do was open presents, cook some breakfast, and not worry about any messes or dishes. If your house is like mine during the holidays then it is usually covered in a layer of baking dust, wrapping paper, toys, and decorations. It was nice to not have any of that when we woke up Christmas morning!

We had to taste test the cookies and make sure they were okay for Santa ;-)

Someone was happy on Christmas morning!

Her first look. She was so cute taking it all in!

We take life documentation seriously in our family. This might be my favorite picture of these two from Christmas morning. 

TIME TO OPEN PRESENTS!

Baby girl LOVED opening her presents!

This picture may be blurry but I love it. She was just giddy about her first present!

She just cracks us up all day long. Silly girl

After opening all of her presents we got her rocking horse out and let her ride it while we got breakfast ready. She LOVES it. Although she has also decided she wants to be a trick rider. NOT okay with mommy. Standing on the horse=not safe. So the horsey has been moved to the basement for the time being. 

Is he not the BEST? He grilled our bacon outside because while I LOOOOVE me some bacon...I do not love the way it makes our house smell. So he rocks for going out on the deck in the cold to make me happy :-) 

Emma Claire wanted to model the scarf she got me for Christmas. Doesn't she have great taste? I love it!

We had a great low key Christmas day and loved every moment of it. And we ended the day on a great note, by reading the true story of Christmas and celebrating the birth of our Lord and Savoir, Jesus Christ. Emma Claire was so good and cute the whole time hubby was reading. We had both of our bibles in the bed and while hubby was reading out of his, Emma Claire played with mine and flipped through the pages. Such a sweet moment. That is a tradition that we will continue the rest of our lives. It's the most important one, after all!

"Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord." Luke 2:11

 

Christmas Eve- Evening

Christmas Eve was such a special night for us. The hubs had to work so we had a girls night. After our jammie day we got gussied up around 5:00 o'clock and headed to church for the candle light service.

 The service was absolutely beautiful. This is a picture the ladies quartet singing Not So Silent Night. These wonderful ladies are AMAZING. They always give me chills! This song was especially powerful.

Emma Claire did well during the majority of the service. She was so sweet and sat in my lap quietly and just took it all in. Then towards the very end she decided she had just about enough and wanted to run around. So we went and stood in one of the alcoves and she got to run around. So sadly I don't have a picture of the church glowing with candle light because I was chasing after Emma Claire. It was beautiful though and such an awesome experience. 

After church we headed over to my friend Daniella's house. She was so gracious and kind to invite us over on Christmas eve. Daniella and I met at MOPS and she is also in our small group. She has such an amazing heart for the Lord and is one of the sweetest people I know! I was so grateful to her and her family for opening their home to Emma Claire and I on  a special night.

 Daniella had her house all decked out and the best part was the kiddo table. This was not your momma's kid's table, y'all! Each child had their own little personalized place setting and she had candy, snacks, toys, games, crafts...you name it, she had it set up! It was adorable and EC loved it!

Friends, popcorn, AND a cute dog? Emma Claire was in heaven!

All of the kiddos. They had a BLAST!

How sweet is this sticker manger set?

Daniella's house is just gorgeous! I LOVE her kitchen! And all of her decorations, beautiful.

How cute are these mason jars? She is so creative!

Y'all. Dinner was OUTSTANDING. I felt like I was at a restaurant. I kid you not. We started off with homemade Italian wedding soup that was divine.

 Then we had homemade manicotti with bread and salad. Also wonderful.

After the first two courses it all started to run together. We had ham, beef, roasted vegetables, rice, cornish game hens, and more. It was a treat, that's for sure. I'm drooling just thinking about it.

Then there was dessert...

We didn't get home until almost midnight and Emma Claire was wiped out. She was such a trooper and did so great staying out so late. I was a proud momma!

And in case you were worried the hubs missed out...Daniella sent me home with a TON of food for him! He loved it all and ate most of it that night.

I cannot tell you how blessed I felt on Christmas Eve. It's always hard to be away from family at Christmastime but being around friends makes it so much easier. So here is a big THANK you to Daniella and her sweet family! :-)

Christmas Eve- Day!

Christmas eve was such a special and fun day! It was by far the most eventful Christmas eve we have had in a while! I am splitting Christmas eve into two posts, one for the daytime activities, and one for the evening. Basically I'm going to be blogging about all things Christmas for the next week or so! Get excited ;-) I just want to remember all of the small, fun, details and writing lots of little posts is the way to do that.

Christmas eve morning we woke up and got the house ready for a little play date. Our friends Sonja and Tylar were coming over to play and bake Christmas cookies!

Emma Claire was so excited to have a friend coming over to play she couldn't stay off the furniture! ha!

Precious baby. She stood at the door and waited for Tylar for almost 10 minutes! And she held onto a bottle of sprinkles the entire time. Bless her heart. 

A family tradition. I HAVE to watch It's a Wonderful Life while making Christmas cookies!

HA these two pictures Crack. Me. Up. Such goofy girls!!! They were SO good about playing together! Sonja and I actually baked cookies for an hour while these sweet girls played. Christmas miracle!

They both got a little fussy at one point but Daddy came and saved the day! They loved when he picked them both up!

Our fun cookies! We had such a blast baking. We also discovered I don't own a rolling pin. Shocker, I know! So hubby sawed off a piece of PVC pipe for us to use and it worked great!

Baking girls! Excuse the messy hair/jammies look we've all got going on! We had a very low-key morning and no one got gussied up!!! But we sure did have a blast together! 

And the best part of the day...SNOW! That's right, we had a white Christmas Eve! It was so pretty to watch out the window!

After Sonja and Tylar left I put EC down for a nap and did a little cookie decorating! I found a new frosting recipe that I LOVE and will for sure be posting soon! It's a keeper!

While I decorated cookies I watched White Christmas. The perfect movie for a snowy afternoon.

The finished cookies. I just love the "look" of my new icing. It hardens just enough but is still soft when you bite into it. Perfection. 

Up next...Christmas Eve evening! Baby girl and I went to our Christmas Eve service at church and then to a very good friend's house to celebrate the birth of our Savior! It was a wonderful night and we are just So blessed. 

Merry Christmas from Our Family to Yours!

I sincerely wish I could send each and every one of my readers a Christmas card. It is one of my very favorite things to do this time of year. That and GETTING Christmas cards, of course! I have them all taped to our kitchen cabinets and love seeing so many friendly faces each day. Emma Claire loves it too! She waves at the cards and says "hi" all day long. It makes my heart happy!  

This year we sent out over 100 cards and I still had people I wished I could have sent cards to! Next year we will be bumping up our order so that we can send out more. For y'all who didn't receive a card in the mail I wanted to share our Christmas card on the blog today.

So from our family to yours....

 MERRY CHRISTMAS!