Christmas

A Christmas post is long overdue! We had a wonderful and mostly quiet (except for Annelise crying) Christmas season. I had intended on taking the girls to the mall to get pictures with Santa, but changed my mind when I realized it would be silly to pay money to get a picture where both girls were crying. Annelise would cry because she always cries and Hadleigh would cry of fright (she might not have cried...but it was up in the air). Hadleigh did get to see Santa twice. The school that Hadleigh attends had a breakfast with Santa Claus. We joined Matt, Steph and Jacob, as well as Brea and Brennan at the breakfast and all three kiddos seemed to be a little nervouse about the big man in the red suit. We did manage to get Santa to stand behind us for a picture. In Dave's hometown Santa rides around on a firetruck on Christmas Eve and stops at all the houses where there are children to pass out peppermints. We actually jumped up when we heard the sirens and got Hadleigh out of bed to run outside and see Santa.

I think that one good thing about living far away from family is that you have to get Christmas shopping done early so presents can be sent. I was motivated to have everything done by the first week in December and apart from Dave's present I accomplished my task.

We enjoyed celebrating Christmas through worship at Intown through the Sundays in December. Our Community Group had a wine and cheese party, and there were a couple other little things we attended.

Dave's office was closed the week of Christmas, so we had extra fun having him home for almost two weeks in a row. Our little family celebrated Christmas on the 23rd. I made coffeecake for breakfast and Hadleigh got up to open presents. She enjoyed it, but wasn't as excited as I thought she might be. After church Dave started working on dinner while I kept Annelise mostly quiet. Our Christmas dinner tradition includes roast duck, which was amazing as always.

Christmas Eve we got up early, loaded up the car and drove up to Knoxville to Dave's family. Annelise cried all but 45 minutes of the 4 hour ride...good times...we just kept driving and only stopped to feed her and get fries and a vanilla shake.

Christmas day, Dave's sister, Angie, and her boys, Jonathan, Josh and Jacob, and Dave's grandmother all came over. We opened presents, and then had a yummy lunch.

It was really fun to see Hadleigh with her cousins and grandparents. The boys are so sweet with her and she was following around Josh giving him high 5s and fists. She also loves her Grandma and Bapa. She will occassionally pick up the phone and start talking to Bapa...so sweet!

We drove back down to Atlanta on Thursday and the trip went so much better. Dave sat in the

back in between the girls and Annelise slept the entire ride home...truly amazing.

I was thankful for the entire experience of Christmas. Christmas in Germany was such a different experience, and there are things that we learned while living there that we hope to keep in our lives. While I do enjoy getting and giving presents, I really hate for that to be the focus. I am thankful for our families who honored our wishes for toys that don't make noise, and also who got our children nice things without going over the top. I guess it is still nice for us because Hadleigh is too young to understand the whole gift thing, maybe things will change more when she gets older. One of the gals in our community group was asking me about Christmas and if we got Hadleigh and Annelise gifts. I laughed because we did not buy them gifts. They certainly do not know the difference and we certainly don't need any more toys, etc, and I figure we buy a lot of other things for them...like zoo memberships, etc. One day I might buy them something, but right now we are going with the less is more philosophy.