Christmas Celebrations

Christmas this year was wonderful, but crazy-beautiful, as our life has been as of late.  We began celebrating Christmas on the Thursday before Christmas (Dad's house)...then we celebrated at Mom's house on Friday...with our kids on Saturday morning (since it was going to be so hard doing it early enough to make it to church without a fuss on Sunday morning)...with the Rikard's on Saturday evening...church Sunday morning...with the Flannagin's on Sunday evening...and then headed off to Mobile first thing Monday morning for a week with our Mobile family and friends.  LOTS of Christmas, I know!  We did lots of mini-reminder lessons to the kids about the true meaning of Christmas, how to show thankfulness in ALL things, etc., especially this year with all of the traditional Christmas celebrations around us.  We did not want to forget or let the children forget the TRUE meaning of Christmas...the birth of our Savior!

Here are a few snapshots (unedited, even -- can't believe I'm doing this!) into our Christmas.  I still have LOTS of photographs taken that I haven't even touched (remember that crazy-beautiful life I've been telling you about??)...but maybe this will work for now :-)  Note that Austin is wearing his IRON MAN outfit often -- Aunt Heather and Uncle Kyle gave this to him on Friday night, and he wore it Friday night, Saturday, and Sunday (after church).  It must have been a big hit!  He wanted everyone to see his big muscles...