Christmas 2005 - What did you give for Christmas?

Merry Christmas!

I tried to help Hannah focus on giving, and that this season is not about getting. My fav. phrase now is, "What did you give?"

In getting into the spirit of giving Hannah made some gifts for family. She made Sarah a bead necklace (on her own, all her idea. I was very impressed!), for my mom and dad she made a coffee canister, she made a picture frame for Grammy and a picture for Daddy. We had a great time making these gifts.

We also had a gift exchange with some friends that are their age. [Lisa, with her boys Nathan (3), Caleb (2), and girl Abigail (6m?) ] Hannah went to the dollar store and pick out gifts. She got 2 cars for the boys and a small doll for Abigail. She wanted to wrap the gifts and was very excited to give them to her new friends. Caleb was upset that he didn't get to have the cars. Even when we opened our gifts together Caleb put up a fuss about not getting to play with the cars. He doesn't quite get the giving gifts thing if it's something that he wants! :) We'll work on that for next year.

We were blessed with some money and thought it would be real nice to get the kids some bikes. Hannah tries to ride a "bike" on the arm of the couch a lot. We went to WalMart and got some big wheels. Joshua put them together while we watched a movie. An early Christmas gift.





A couple of days before Christmas Hannah looked at our tree and told me that we had no decorations. This was true because mom is too pregnant to put up a lot of decorations. So I asked her what she wanted to do about that. She told me that we needed to decorate it and I asked her how she wanted to do that. She told me that she wanted to make snowflakes for the tree. So we did.

We opened our presents as a family today. Joshua and I decided not to let presents get in the way of Church in the morning. We started at about 2pm and Caleb fell asleep! (He woke up at about 4) Hannah passed out presents to everyone and wanted Sarah to open her gift first. (The necklace that she made for her) Joshua and I enjoyed watching them open their gifts.

Sarah loves necklaces and really like her gift. I think it was great of Hannah to think of making her sister a gift and she picked the perfect thing to make her!
Mom and Dad gave Sarah a baby doll of her own and a stroller. (She had been playing with Hannah's and Hannah is not so good at sharing her baby's.)

Dad got Hannah a tape player with microphones and they sang "lary boy" together. And Mom gave Hannah a skirt outfit.

Mom and Dad got Caleb a bunch of trucks that he just loves and carries them around in a shopping cart that we have. Planes, Trains and automobiles... he loves them all!

Last night we went to the candle light service at church. They did not have childcare (this we did not know) so we sat in the cry room with all three kids. Caleb had enough about half way into the show and Joshua took him out to the hall to play. Toward the end we sang Happy Birthday Jesus and the pastor asked the kids to stand. Hannah stood up and sang the song, on her own! It was so cute.

Christmas Day we opened our stockings in our bed together. It was a sweet time of being together and we lost track of time and missed church. :( I was very upset about this.

We had family at our house again. My Mom and gang came over on Christmas day and we made dinner again together. Hannah loved to open presents and was very eager to help others with there gifts. :) We gave Michelle a key chain chapstick holder and bath stuff and Hannah gave Lindsey a snowflake wreath that she made and we also gave her some bath stuff. I gave to my mom a Creative Memories Album of her and I and we gave to Mark a gift certificate to his fav store, Bass Pro.



We also sent Joshua's sister and her family a package with a starwars toy for David Austin, a doll for Jadah and a gift card for Rachel and David. We enjoyed being able to do that.

This season has been a huge blessing and gift from God. We would not have been able to do all that we wanted if it were not for God's provision in our life. I have updated the "Account of God's greatness" post and you can see how much He has truly blessed us this year.