Christmas morning

Christmas time is seriously one of my favorite family times of year. I am a summer girl at heart. But I truly love celebrating Christmas with my family.  Early morning snuggles by the fire on Christmas morning. Juder woke before anyone else and it was so sweet to get to spend some morning time with just him. Even Boomer and Daisy liked the snuggles.

 Getting so big. Our tradition has been to do a devotion on Christmas eve together and open some family gifts. Like Christmas PJ's! I love reading the Christmas story to Eli and seeing him actually start to understand that Jesus was born and that he was a baby. Love that time together.

 The big man in red brought this for Eli this year!!! AWESOME!! This thing has gotten so much use already its ridiculous! Both boys absolutely love it!

 Speaking of the big man, Santa! We definitely embrace Santa in our home. For me Santa is imaginative, and childlike and magical, things that I want my kids to enjoy and love. We do talk a lot about how Santa brings us presents because we get presents on birthdays and it is Jesus birthday! And this year we even talked a little about how the wise men brought presents to baby Jesus for his birthday. I love that we can celebrate Christmas and the magical parts but not lose the true meaning of Jesus born as a little child to save the world. My only prayer is that my boys will "get" the bigger picture some day. But for now getting to open presents because it is someone ELSE'S birthday is a pretty sweet deal!!

I  loved this look of awe at his new kitchen!! Sleepy eyed wonder.

 We had to check if Santa ate the milk and cookies we left for him! And he did. Eli LOVED that.

 Christmas mantle.

 On Christmas eve we had a great night with Gigi and the whole Keegan family. But on our way home we saw that our street did a luminary lighting!

 And someone lit the luminaries for our house! It was so beautiful and definitely got us in the Christmas spirit!

 Little Juder loved the gears toy we got for him. And I think daddy loved it too ha!

 I didn't take any pictures, but one of my favorite parts of Chrismtas is getting to cook fun and yummy recipes for my family. Elijah loved the picture frame eggs I made! Dave said his mom used to make those for him when he was a kid too.

 Oma and Opa joined the party later in the morning. We love having them!!!

 Seriously my baby is getting to be such a big boy. Whenever he sits at the bar like this and chats with me while I cook I have to do double takes and think my goodness he is getting so big.

 Christmas cuties!

 So big!

 Bed head!

 The week after Christmas Nana and Grampa came up to celebrate with us! We had such a nice time and Aunt Vicki and Uncle Anthony came too. And uncle Andy even came out for a visit. I love hosting. I love having people in my home. I just love this time of year. Aunt Vicki found Elijah his very own CARS guitar and boy did he love "jamming" with Grampa. Even little Juder was getting in on the action with his dance moves and singing "I DON"T KNOW!". Too cute.

A good Nana snuggle.