Sharing Seasons: Christmas 2014

What a December this has been! We were blessed to schedule Daniel's palate repair surgery December 2nd. We were told recovery could be lengthy, so this gave him plenty of time to recover before his little sister is born. He handled everything so so well! His surgery kicked off our Christmas season. We actually decorated our house and began our family advent at the end of November. I love Christmas and want our children to grow up with traditions. I have loved seeing these traditions come alive through our children's excitement.

The three of us in pre-op. One of our pastors/good friends as well as another good friend of ours sat with us in pre-op and brought us breakfast and coffee which was so comforting.

Our view from Daniel's hospital window.

After surgery. He looked so good. He was eating by the end of the day! Amazing!

Joshua stayed with my parents. The day he came home Nathan decided that they should make their first trip to Auburn. So Joshua toured campus and drank Toomer's Lemonade. They both had so much fun! They both talked about their trip to Auburn for weeks afterwards.

And of course Nathan came home with an Auburn hat for each child. :)

While it really has taken a month for Daniel to recover, he was already doing so well within a few days of coming home from the hospital.

A few days later it was my turn to spend the day with Joshua. We ate at Chick-fil-A and went Christmas shopping. The manager at this CFA lets children come back with him to make ice cream cones...another reason I love that place!

For me the most fun thing about this Christmas has been that the boys are old enough for us to teach them the Christmas story and learn some of the family traditions that Nathan and I have talked about having years before we had children. One of those traditions is that we as a family read through an Advent devotional each Christmas season. So far our favorite is the Jesse Tree. We read the devotional as a family and used a story Bible for the Scripture passages. Then the boys took turns each night hanging an ornament on our Jesse Tree. We learned about this years ago from another friend who blogs.

Also, the boys are old enough for us to "do" preschool at home. I love getting to be a preschool teacher again. And thank you Pinterest. ;)

I just want to throw this in here because Daniel picked up a pair of scissors on his on and started cutting this month!

Another tradition that we began in 2012 is having a family Christmas day on one of the Tuesdays before the 25th. Both sides of our family have big celebrations for Christmas and both live hours from us. We could never both stay home and visit family. So we alternate traveling to each side every other year which is a blessing. We were concerned, however, that our children would never have a consistent Christmas tradition without doing the same thing every year. So we take one of Nathan's Tuesdays (which is an off day for him) and celebrate as a family. We open gifts on this morning, read the Christmas story, sing Christmas songs, eat special meals, play Christmas music all day, and in the future we hope to do something special in the evening. This year we planned to go to the Callaway Lights but it was raining.

So on this morning we set up the baby gate so Joshua couldn't go into the Living room. He woke up at 6:30 ready to open presents but stayed in bed with us until Daniel woke up around 9:00.

We let them open one present for Faith.

Here it is! The picture of our Christmas breakfast feast. Oranges, PB and J, M&Ms.

Christmas Eve we traveled to Tallassee! Daniel met his Aunt Lala for the first time! His first Christmas with us was amazing. He loved every bit of it. He is such a big boy now!