Merry Christmas!

This year we continued with some old traditions, and started some new ones. 

Old traditions: 

- Jesse Tree Advent (an ornament and a story every day in December going through Jesus' lineage), 

- an evening drive to look at Christmas lights (with popcorn in the van!) 

- baked french toast on Christmas morning

- a Christmas morning jog

- Christmas Eve service at JRCC

- birthday party for Jesus

- picking a gift for Jesus from the gift guide

New traditions:

- family movie night. we projected Winnie the Pooh Christmas on our wall. The girls LOVED it.

- Stanley Park Christmas train

Grandma Jo-Ann bought an extra Christmas dress last year and so we were able to re-use the matching Christmas dresses.

Grandma She-She, Auntie Morgan, and Uncle Jesse came for brunch and gave some nice gifts to our girls.

It snowed a few days before Christmas and we got out and built a snowman in our backyard. I'd love for this to be a tradition, but you can never be sure it will snow around here.

The girls made crosses out of their tinker toys.

Karis gets a turn at putting the ornament on the Jesse Tree.

A picture of our family movie night. So fun.

All ready for Christmas Eve.

The big girls wanted me to flat-iron their hair, "just like Momma's". They looked so pretty, all in their Christmas best. They even put on perfume.

Grandpa Rob came over for Christmas Eve.

We took a ride on the Stanley Park train with Uncle. It was a Charlie Brown Christmas theme!

On Christmas morning the girls were so excited to open their gifts. Ella and Juju ran out to get Karis her gift in her crib. 

Ella and Juju got their own Bibles. They are very excited about them. We got them the NIRV version, written for new readers. Ella does quite well reading hers and Juliette enjoys all of the pictures.

Post-jog French toast tastes good!

Before our guests came, Ella wrote her own message on one of our chalkboards. The letters are a little mixed up, but the idea is so sweet ("Merry Christmas Ella"). She tried to make it look like the chalkboard in our kitchen and even drew snowflakes.

We celebrated Jesus' birthday with our friends Roger, Helen, and Nathalia.