This Christmas Season

We had a wonderful Christmas this year. The kids got a lot of stuff and were kinda spoiled. This year was so much fun to watch Brooklynn, next year will be great cause Cameron will be older and can acctually open his gifts. Brooklynn told me her favorite gift was what Santa left in her stocking in her bedroom 3 little Strawberry Stortcake dolls. (I wish I would have known, I don't think it cost Santa too much, cause I have seen those for only $1. I will have to remember that.) We got to spend a lot of time with family and friends.

I grew up with lots of holiday traditions some we still do with my family and some I do at my own house. We also have a few new ones that we started. A few of my favorite is that we get a new Christmas book every year so Ryan and I now 8 since we have been married and we read them through out the month of December. At my mom's we also have a Christmas Eve box that includes some gifts that we get on Christmas Eve. Both Ryan and my families have always had a dinner Christmas Eve so whoever we eat dinner with for Thanksgiving we do the other family for Christmas Eve dinner and switch off every year. Then after dinner we still go to the other house to finish off the celebrations. I love that with Ryan's family the kids do the nativity and this year Brooklynn was Mary, Ty was Joseph and Cameron was baby Jesus for about 2 minutes.

A new tradition that we started this year was Brooklynn and I made cookies for Santa, it was a lot of fun. It was funny though the next morning Brooklynn said, "Mom, I kinda sad at Santa," I asked her why and she said "cause he ate all my cookies." I explained to her that is why we made the cookies and he left her lots of stuff instead. And acctually we still had cookies left, we only gave him a few. She was happy after she knew we still had some.

Also in the last probably 4 or 5 years I have been given several nativity scenes. One is a hand-me-down, one from my grandma, one came from Russia, and one from when I was little and a few other gifts. I realized that I actually have 8 this year and thought that I would collect one every year also. Some day when my basement is finished I will have lots of room to display them. But for now my decorations are a little squished but I love this time of year.

Ryan's parents, my mom and dad all spoiled us this year. Ryan's parents gave us all a picture of Christ that Ryan's aunt Chris drew. (Chris passed away almost 2 years ago, this is a perfect gift to always remember her.) They also bought a Wii to keep at their house so we could all come over and play. My dad got us specific things for Ryan and me and I got a gift card to Old Navy to get new clothes. Wahoo! My mom got us a lot of different things, the coolest was in 1998 when the new quarters came out my mom bought the books to collect them and so all these years she has been secretly saving them and putting them in books for us. She finally finished it and gave them to us. Also she got me those blender things the Bullet. I am very excited about that.

We had a great year and got a lot of neat stuff and had some good experiences. In a later post I will put on there the stuff about the Blankets and toys for NICU and PICU. I hope everyone had a great holiday as well. Hope everyone also has a Happy New year.