Despite sickness running through our house, we had a Merry Christmas. Our poor Karis is still sick, but everybody else is well.
Some of our plans got cancelled, but we enjoyed many of our traditions. It was fun to celebrate our first Christmas as a family of 6!
We hope you had a Merry Christmas!
Waking up to their stocking on Christmas morning. Their favorite stocking stuffer - princess chapstick!
Last Saturday we has a nice visit at Great Grandpa's. Here's Auntie Jan reading "The Gingerbread Baby" to our girls. It's a new favorite around here. Ella was very excited when she saw Auntie Jan - she said "hey, I have matching haircuts with Auntie Jan."
Sickness meant a lot of time at home reading stories, which we love. It also meant sleepless nights and a lot of laundry, I prefer the reading :)
Peter got his own copy of "Little Blue Truck" and his own little blue truck to play with. Thank-you A. Jan and U. Brian!
On Christmas Eve eve we headed out to do a Christmas light tour. You know our girls are sick when we come home with uneaten popcorn and hot chocolate.
The girls loved the dancing light houses (the houses that had lights synched to music).
On Christmas Eve, the girls helped make a huge Gingerbread man.
Karis is a trooper. She had a horrible cold this week, but she hung in there. She spent many nights in our bed, sleeping between us.
The girls named our Gingerbread man "Digory". He is a character from "The Magician's Nephew".
All dressed up for church.
We got home early and watched "The Polar Express".
6 stockings :) Our girls have been very busy the past few weeks making stocking stuffers for Spencer and I. My favorite was the snowman puzzle I received.
Ella and Juliette also made wreaths for all of the doors inside our house.
We picked out our gifts for Jesus from the gift guide. Ella and Juliette picked gifts for the church in Ste Rose (Québec). Karis picked the gift of water for a village without fresh water. I picked a wheelchair for somebody in need in Guatemala. And Spencer chose to donate to the Ferguson family who host community meals for youth.
Baby's first Christmas.
We went for our traditional Christmas morning jog. Ella rode her bike. And we came home to eat baked French toast.
And the huge gift for Dadda was a map. This has been in the works for weeks. One day during quiet time I came into the room to find Ella and Juju taping about 50 pieces of yellow paper together. They informed me that they were making "a huge map for Dadda". They copied the huge map we have on our wall and labeled the map with lots of country names and oceans. The first country they labeled was Guatemala. "Dadda loves Guatemala" they said. They kept it a secret right until Christmas morning.
Grandpa Rob came over for Christmas dinner. He brought the girls an accordion. We love it!
We put our final ornament on our Jesse Tree. We loved reading through "Unwrapping the Greatest Gift" and look forward to doing it again next year.
And today we got into the finger paints from Grandpa Rob. We love to paint!
In case you were wondering how cute our niece Lydia is these days...
