Christmas.

We had so much fun during the month of December. Too much fun to bother blogging about it, obviously. It was funny...after several rather busy months, December was oddly calm. This left lots of time for sweet family tradition-making and time spent together. The last Saturday of November, we decorated for Christmas and then spent the evening watching Charlie Brown Christmas in new Christmas PJs and drinking homemade hot chocolate. Another Saturday was spent at the Children's Museum enjoying the Christmas exhibits. We spent a day baking and decorating Christmas cookies with friends and then delivering them to our neighbors and fellow pastors' families. We took the kids shopping in the dollar section of Target, where they bought little presents for each other with their piggy bank money. We built a snowman and went sledding. We enjoyed celebrating the long-anticipated birth of Christ every day in December with a Jesse tree. We sang lots and lots of Christmas carols. We even participated in our first ever Knüsperhause Fete (Gingerbread House Party).

We decided to stay home for Christmas morning this year, since the kids are getting older and we wanted to focus on our own family traditions. It was a really sweet time for us, with a special breakfast of pumpkin pancakes, eggs benedict, and fresh fruit, followed by Nathan telling the Christmas story as the kids used their toy nativity to act it out. And then, of course, the presents. I think the stockings alone would have been exciting enough for these three.

So you see, although I have very few pictures to show for it (my pregnant self has been too lazy to even pick up the camera) we had our best Christmas yet.