Celebrating Christmas Part 2

On the day after Christmas, we headed almost 600 miles west to Indiana.  It was an uneventful road trip, which is always good.

Here's a picture while we were traveling in the car.  I really liked the sky in this shot! It was a beautiful day to travel!

 We arrived at Jean's in the evening and stayed with her for the week.

 Here they are with Grandma Jean.  They love each other so much!

The munchkins with Aunt Tracey

It snowed a little bit while we were in Indiana, just enough to cover the ground.

 For my parents' Christmas present, we had a big family picture taken of everyone since we were all in town.  This was my mom and dad's idea as they wanted to update the picture we had taken about 4 years earlier.

Here's our whole family as of December, 2011. (Minus little Lucy whom my younger sister's family is adopting from China very soon!)

 My parents with all their grandbabies.

 My older sister and her family.

 Here we are!

 My younger sister and her family.

 My brother and his family.

And here are the two people who started it all... my Mom and Dad!

My siblings and me
(I've noticed from this picture that I am the shortest in this bunch and my brother, the youngest, is the tallest.... hmmm!)

 My Dad gave each of the guys a jacket of their favorite sport's team.  They were really impressed and very happy with their gifts, as you can see!

 We headed back home on Jan. 1st. 

Once again, the munchkins did great traveling/sleeping in the car.

We enjoyed our visit with our families.  Our time with them always goes by way too fast, but we are always thankful for the opportunities we have to see them all!

Celebrating Christmas Part 1

On Christmas Eve we celebrated by going to church for the Christmas Eve service.

When we came home, we took a few pictures of the munchkins and us by the Christmas Tree.

 After some pictures, we had the munchkins open two gifts from us,  new PJ's and a crocheted candy cane ornament.

 On Christmas morning, which was on Sunday this year, we woke up and Jon read the Christmas story from the second chapter of Luke.

 Then, before we headed to church, we opened some presents.  

 Here, our sweetheart opened her gift from her brother, a princess umbrella.
(Despite the scowl on Buddy's face in this photo, he really was very excited to give this gift to his sister!)

 Buddy opened his gift from his sister, who picked it out herself.  It was a teddy bear holding a blue blanket.  Buddy has a blue doggy blanket that he sleeps with, so this was a thoughtful gift from his sister,

 Each of them also received their own bibles this year.  We have really enjoyed reading out of these bibles with them and seeing the pictures that go along with some of the bible stories. We also thought it would be helpful for them to see the verses they are learning in AWANA in their own bibles.

 After opening a few more gifts, we were off to go worship our newborn King at church.

After church, due to my poor planning and limited food in the house... because we were heading to Indiana the next day... for a week... to see our extended families, we ate lunch at a nearby Chinese restaurant.  (Not many restaurants are opened on Christmas Day - surprise, surprise.)  We had never eaten at a Chinese restaurant as a family, so we weren't sure if the munchkins would even like Chinese food.

 Once we got there and received our food, the kids loved it!  They even ate their food with chopsticks, a skill I have yet to master!

I'm still blown away by how well they ate their Chinese food with chopsticks!

When we arrived home from the restaurant, the munchkins played with some of their Christmas presents while Jon and I started to pack up to leave for Indiana the next morning.
  

We had a wonderful time celebrating Christmas with our family of four.

Christmas Goodies

A few weeks before Christmas, Buddy and I made some yummy chocolate pretzel treats.  These are really easy and fun to make.

 We put some wax paper down on a cookie sheet, then put the pretzels with unwrapped Hershey Kisses on top.

 After putting the pretzels in the oven at 400 degrees for literally 2 minutes, we took them out... 

 and pressed plain M&Ms into the melty chocolate.  After they were all done, we put them in the fridge to set.

 We also used Hershey's Hugs and did the same thing with those.  These were my personal favorite. I liked the white chocolate flavor of the Hugs.

Aren't they pretty?  We made several of them and gave them as gifts to neighbors and friends as well as ate many ourselves.

 Another Christmas goodie we made were cut out cookies.  The kids loved decorating these cookies.  

 Jon was even able to help out and supervise.

 They look like they are really concentrating...

 And here are the finished products.  We ate a few and froze a few to save for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.

I think they turned out beautifully.  

Christmas Ornaments

This year in December, the kids and I made some special ornaments.  

This first picture is a photo of a crocheted candy cane ornament I made.  I thought these turned out really sweet and added just the right touch to our tree.  I ended up making a few for our munchkins, my siblings, some friends, as well as for the grandparents.

 These next pictures are of ornaments I made with the munchkins.  They were very easy and fun to make.

All you need is some white craft paint, ball ornaments (your choice of color -we used frosted red ones), paint brushes or sponges, and permanent markers.

 What you do is coat your palm of your child's hand, with the white paint.  (You can either paint it on with the brushes or put the paint on a plate and have your child put their hand down in the paint to coat their palm. We did it with the paint brushes.)  Then, have your child grasp the ornament so your child makes 5 'snowmen' out of their handprint.  Make sure your child's palm and especially their fingers, are completely covered in paint to make the best snowmen.  

 Allow the paint to dry completely.  

(We put our ornaments on a cup to let them dry so we didn't smearing the paint.)

 Once the paint is dry, you can decorate your 'snowmen' with the permanent markers.  We also put the year and our child's name on the bottom so we can remember how big their hands were this Christmas.  That was the part I loved the most about these ornaments, that we can have a precious reminder of how small our children's hands were on Christmas, 2011.

The munchkins ended up making 3 each - one for us to keep and one for each set of grandparents.  Jon and I also made one ourselves.  

By the way, the grandparents loved their special ornaments from the Munchkins. 

The National Christmas Tree

One of the things we try to do each year at Christmas time is go down to the Ellipse in Washington, DC to see the National Christmas Tree.  Although, the past couple of years we haven't been able to make it down for one reason or another, we were excited to see it this year.  We were a bit disappointed when we did get a glimpse of it.  They had to replace the one they have decorated in the past due to the snow storms we've had in recent years.  Needless to say, it was a lot smaller than we remember it!  It's shape reminded us of a Hershey's kiss.

 There were still many train sets up and running around the tree as well as a tree decorated for each state in the union around it.  It's always fun to locate the one from Indiana as that is where both Jon and I are from!

The munchkins enjoyed watching the trains go round and round...

 A view of the Washington Monument from the Christmas Tree.

 .

 Our munchkins standing in front of the tree from Indiana.

If you look closely at this shot, you can see the White House in the background, off to your right.

One of the many perks about living relatively close to our nation's capital is having the opportunity each year to visit the National Christmas Tree!