This Is The Sweet Life!: CHRISTMAS!!!!

This is our Christmas morning, the main tree in my parents house. Stunning isn't it!

Waking up to a white Christmas! I didn't get any pics where the snow flakes turned out but it was so fun that the snow was falling on Christmas morning!

This was an extravagant Christmas for Grant and I and we are overwhelmed at the way God LOVES to bless His children and my parents too! My husband and I have chosen to not have our children believe that Santa is real and the one who brings the presents. I know that a lot of people don't understand why we would do this but to us, Christmas is about celebrating the birth of our Lord Jesus and having an opportunity to bless and be a blessing. I think that sometimes Santa can distract from the real meaning of Christmas and put the emphasis on the presents. Honestly, it's impossible to be an American during Christmas and not have Santa be some kind of a reality. But we have chosen to celebrate who the real Santa was (Saint Nicholas) and his extravagant heart to give. We have just told Eli that the Santa's he sees in the mall or wherever are people pretending to be Santa and we pretend that Santa is real but he knows the truth. He also knows not to go around telling everyone what the truth is. We do want to respect other people's desires and traditions.

That being said, I love that Christmas is a time to pull out all the stops to bless our children and family! I am a gift giver and I LOVE scheming and thinking about how to bless the socks off of the people I love! Our Christmas began with Eli getting to discover his new kitchen I wrote about in the Christmas Eve entry.

He had SO much fun discovering all the features and wanted to go get his mittens so he could have "oven mitts" to get the cookies out of the oven!

Here is my family Christmas morning. I absolutely LOVE that God has given me this man to walk with and these kids to raise! I truly feel I have the BEST life there is! We were sleepy from staying up so late to put the kitchen together.

Gifts, Gifts, Gifts!

I didn't get a whole lot of pictures of the gifts but here are some of the highlights.

This is Bell's first stocking to open...

My mom got my dad an ipad (something he's wanted for a while and would never buy for himself). He was so shocked and surprised!

One of the most fun gifts was for my sister in law. 4 years ago their wedding video was all loaded on my computer at my house and our house was broken into. The computer was stolen and we discovered that we didn't have any back up copies of their video...thus we lost their wedding video with absolutely no hope of recovery. Miraculously, (after moving twice since then) this summer I stumbled upon a box with some tapes in it. I was looking for a tape of mine and found all the tapes to their wedding!!!!! This is truly a miracle because we are pretty meticulous to go through and weed out old stuff every year. And after years of doing this we have never found the tapes! So my brother and I decided to make it a surprise Christmas present for her. I made a dvd and gave it to her as her present. I told her that is was a slideshow of pics I put together (its just a Christmas lie, right? lol) So we put the dvd in and it started showing their wedding! Then I told her the story of how we found it in the attic surprisingly and the went the tears!

So fun to surprise and bless! The other fun thing was that one of the tapes had a ton of people's video blessing to them for their marriage so they will have fun looking back on all of that. This summer will be their 5 year anniversary.

Another fun surprise was a new Wii! We got a wii a couple of years ago but it has been broken for over a year. My dad got Grant and Eli a new one with a new hunting game and attachment gun. It has been really fun and Eli keeps asking non stop to play "bidy-o" games!