Our Family Christmas

I look forward to the excitement of Christmas every year. I love decorating and I love buying gifts for other people (just ask Matt!!), and I love remembering the reason for the season- the birth of Jesus!

This was a year of firsts for me: I hosted my first cookie exchange party with friends, this was the first time I did not have all of my presents wrapped long before Christmas (I have to admit I just finished wrapping the last gift two nights ago!), and it was the first Christmas I got to watch the magic of Christmas through my daughter's eyes.

Our family Christmas this year was a bit different from last year! McKenna was so excited to open presents and was actually pretty good at it! We were out of town Christmas weekend so we had to celebrate a little late, which is something I'm used to. As a kid we would celebrate before traveling back to Harlan for Christmas. As we've gotten older we celebrate after Christmas. I have to say it is kind of nice spreading it out a bit rather than having all of them in one weekend!

Last night Matt picked up Pancheros (one of my favorites) on his way home from work. As we were eating Uncle Robby stopped over to see us. We were glad he came over because then we could get a family picture!

After Robby left we started downstairs opening the gifts from Santa and then moved back upstairs to open gifts from each other. It was so much fun watching (and hearing) McKenna's excitement! She would make an "ooohhhooooo" sound that was so funny!! We started with stockings, but she quickly saw the gifts on the fireplace and wanted to open those instead.

Santa did a Curious George theme for McKenna and she loved every last gift!!

Lots of fun things in her stocking...

Helping Lexi open her stocking stuffers

McKenna was really good about staying away from our tree and presents. I wasn't sure how it was going to go, but she amazed me! She only messed with two presents the whole month, and the one she messed with the most was the one below. I'm wondering if she knew it was for her!

What a fun night we had together! I'm sad it is over!

We look forward to celebrating Christmas with my family on Saturday and Matt's family on Sunday!