It was oh so Merry & Bright!

As many of you know, Christmas is my most favorite time of year. I obsess over it for weeks and love EVERYTHING about it! And this Christmas was no exception. Other than the fact that my grandmother was hospitalized on Christmas Eve with pneumonia (thankfully, she's doing much better), our Christmas was absolutely perfect.

Christmas Eve:

I totally love this picture of Isabella admiring
our tree on Christmas Eve.

On Thursday afternoon we attended one of Hope's Christmas Eve services, which are always so beautifully done and inspirational, followed by dinner for the four of us at our house. We had invited my parents, but with my grandmother's sudden hospitalization everything changed at the last minute.
We enjoyed a fabulous dinner and lots of fun "Santa" conversations. We then went outside to sprinkle some reindeer food in the front lawn. Gotta make sure the reindeer stay strong and healthy for the long trip.
We made sure Santa's milk and cookies were out and ready,...

She totally gets it!

He totally doesn't.

It was SO hard for him to not eat those cookies.

and then opened our traditional Christmas Eve PJs and books boxes:

This is definitely one of my favorite traditions.

The kids went to bed and Scott and I got to sit and enjoy some much appreciated quiet time by the tree while waiting for the jolly old man in red to arrive.

Christmas Day:

Lucky for us our children are too young to think to wake up ridiculously early for the opening of presents. So one of our presents from them was sleeping in until 8:30am. Nice!

Isabella was ecstatic that Santa brought her everything she wanted and then some. But nothing beat the excitement of opening the very first present and finding this:
It's the Tinkerbell house she's been waiting for "her whole life", or since she first saw the commercials for it a few months ago.

She had almost as much fun helping Sam open his presents as she had opening her own.
Out of everything Sam received and opened, this was the highlight of the day for him:
Yep, that would be a box of Whoppers he found inside his stocking. A $.99 box of Whoppers. If only Santa would've known,...

After everything was opened downstairs we read a note from Santa encouraging us to go upstairs to the playroom for one last surprise. And so we did:
The kids were thrilled to see their brand new train table. Santa even took the time to incorporate some toys the kids' grandparents had gotten for them some time ago to make a wonderful little city. It is so cool and they have played with it incessantly.

Then my parents and my brother and his family came over and we all exchanged gifts.

Dad, we're gonna give this one more try! OK?

Some kids like to rock to games like Guitar Hero or Rock Band. I say keep them crazy and obnoxious games. In this house we rock our little hearts out to this Little Tikes guitar (courtesy of Aunt Liz).

I mean seriously, does it get any more rocker than this?Our wild little rocker going CRAZY!!!

So that's our Christmas in a nutshell. I am so very grateful for Christmas and Jesus and for family and love and laughter and joy and togetherness. Because at the end of the day,...... isn't this what it's really all about?

Hope yours was oh so merry and bright as well!