Oh...the excitement plus going around the world on Christmas Day..

What a beautiful way to start the Christmas celebration at our church's Love Feast on Christmas Eve. The Love Feast is a Moravian tradition of serving hot apple cider and cinnamon buns. The service is filled with the singing of Christmas songs interspersed with the reading of the birth of Jesus. The above picture is the last song where we all hold candles and sing Silent Night.

Then we move on to Christmas morning where Brian and I come out, at 8a.m. and find3 little kids patiently waiting for the fun to begin.
It starts with breakfast and the tradition of getting "treat" cereal all wrapped up and waiting for them as their first gift. They love this!


Grandma's stockings come next, which she fills with the coolest things, and on to their presents. Love these facial expressions. Thanks Aunt Nar and Grandma and Grandpa for the awesome presents!






After being too full to move we had the joy of getting on Skype with dear friends who literally live half way around the world from us. It was an 8 hour time difference and so we were thankful that they kept their kids up to talk with our kids. After they were done we adults stayed on for over an hour catching up. The best was when Brian asked them if we could act like they were right in our own living room and just pray with them. I had to take a picture as this was my favorite Christmas present. While we were on with these friends, another friend living in Turkey was trying to skype us. We were sad to miss out on that talk, but we did touch base with Emily in England and that was wonderful!

I didn't catch a picture of everyone we were able to skype, but altogether we connected with friends and family in 3 different countries and we'll try our friends, in Turkey, hopefully soon.

Christmas night we let the kids watch the Nativity for the first time. In our modern times, we sure sweeten up Jesus's birth. The Nativity was so good for the kids to see a more realistic historical view of that time in history. The kids asked great questions, but Lindsey asked the most memorable one. While watching the birth (that isn't graphic) Lindsey asked all wide-eyed at the t.v. screen: "The doctors give you medicine for the pain now, don't they Mom?"