family: Christmas 2012

The decorations have come down but the memories that we made this Christmas, will last forever. Christmas is a totally different experience when you have your own children. Watching the joy and excitement is just priceless. Julianna "got it" this year... she was so thrilled about everything Christmas related.

We taught her about the real meaning of the season and she kept singing Happy Birthday, Jesus over and over. We took her shopping with us to buy Christmas gifts for a family that our church group adopted. At first she was confused and thought the gifts should be for her but we tried to explain to her that we were giving them to someone else who didn't have anything and she got all excited about choosing things for the children. As much as she could understand at nearly 3 years old, she did.

She got to tell Santa what she wanted this year and watching her little face light up when she saw exactly what she wanted by the tree on Christmas morning filled my heart with happiness. Even though the past few months have been very hard on our family, our faith in God has pulled us through. We were very blessed to provide a nice Christmas for our own family as well as for another one.

Little Olivia celebrated her very first Christmas. She seemed to love her gifts but she especially loved the bows, wrapping paper, and ribbons. I can't wait to share many more Christmas memories with my sweet daughters and husband!