Christmas Day in Pictures, 2009

Merry Christmas! Won't you come in and join us for our traditional Christmas Eve Day brunch? Let me serve you a lovely slice of blueberry upside down cake, along with some scrambled cheesy eggs and breakfast sausage. Take a few fresh strawberries, too! The candles are lit, the coffee is hot, just relax and enjoy!

Merry Christmas, Chloe!

Merry Christmas, Clara Anne!

And Merry Christmas, sweet Christin!

[I had a cute picture of Christin to go here, but accidentally deleted it and then couldn't get it back in this spot, argh!]

We love this breakfast cake!


We spent the morning getting our family pictures taken at a local photo studio. We got some cute pictures! The girls were cheerful and did well, despite the over-warm temps in the studio and having to wait awhile initially. We won't see the pictures until January 23, however! Bummer!

Lunch after the picture event was at a hotpot restaurant. For those of you unfamiliar with this Asian food, a big bowl of steaming broth is brought to your table, and then you order a variety of thinly sliced raw meat, vegetables, and even noodles or tiny dumplings to cook in the broth. The cooked food is then dipped in a special sauce and eaten. It's a wonderful, warming meal in the wintertime.

This hotpot restaurant was special because the side dishes came around on a little train, you could lift off whatever you liked! The tracks are running right behind John and Clara Anne.

Lou came with us and enjoyed the break from cooking lunch! Our hotpot had two sections: spicy and not spicy. The spicy was truly HOT! John was sweating after a few bites of food cooked in the spicy broth!

Choo choo! Here comes the food!

After hotpot we sent Christin home with Lou to get a good nap while we took the girls shopping for a Christmas gift. Things took longer than expected, and when we wanted to return home about 5, NO taxis were available. We waited and waited on the side of the street, and finally after about 40 minutes, a woman driving her own car offered to take us home. How kind! We were able to share with her a bit about Christmas, but unfortunately didn't get her number. Both of the girls fell dead asleep in the half hour it took us to get home.

Arriving home we ate a quick, snacky supper, and then began our family Christmas worship time in our customary place: the sofa, where all three girls sit with John while I'm at the piano. We had a nice time of singing, reviewing the four carols that had been our "songs of the week" during December.

Then everybody got excited about putting on the next-to-last ornament on the Jesse tree. Almost to Christmas day!

The Scripture reading that night was Luke 2:1-5. The girls surprised Daddy by getting up to recite it instead of him reading it. (We had been working on that as a gift for Daddy throughout December. I meant to have them memorize much more, but the first five verses were as far as we got!) Christin got into the act too, doing some of the hand motions even though she couldn't say the words!

"To be registered with his wife Mary, who was with child."

It was Christin's turn at the Jesse tree that night.

We finished by letting each of the girls hold a candle (Christin held hers with me) which we lit from one to the next, and sang together Silent Night. They loved it and were very quiet and careful with the candles! I felt so blessed to have some time to truly worship in that moment...there in the quiet, dark, with only the slight flames of the candles illuminating our faces. This moment was "Christmas" for me, if you know what I mean. So thankful...A special time of prayer concluded our family worship.

Next we opened up our stockings. Here's Christin, seeing me hold the stocking and thinking she needs to put her foot into it!

Oooh! New stickers!

Gathered around to see the fun!

Hmmm, what else could be in there?

Clara Anne had fun opening her stocking too!

The gift for the girls this year was dress-up dresses. Clara Anne chose this dress because she loved the color and all the frills.

We think it looks a bit "riverboat hussy" but she was set on it, and it is ONLY a dress-up dress. So, there you have it!

Christin got a new baby stroller. She also co-opted Chloe's new fuzzy crocs.

The new stickers were immediately enjoyed.

Here's Chloe's dress-up dress, which melts John's heart:

And all of the girls got new (2$) butterfly wings, wands, and headbands.

You can see the state the living room was reduced to! We had a fun time and let the girls stay up late, but finally had to get them to bed...a busy day ahead on the 25th celebrating Clara Anne's birthday! Those pictures coming soon!

It was a wonderful Christmas celebration, (if a bit tiring!) but we were thankful for the time to spend together as a family. I was still battling my cold, but the Lord gave strength and energy for what I needed to do that day to make things special, and of course John was right there with me. What a memorable Christmas! Celebrating the gift of a Savior who was born to us, Jesus Christ the Lord!