Beautiful Christmas

We're thoroughly enjoying our extended PA visit! Right now I'm chilling next to Derek, watching Love it or List it while the babies sleep. Watching TV is a fun treat :)

We worked really hard to focus our Christmas on Christ and I think we were successful. The key: less busy-ness. More quiet-ness. Last year I literally was stressing about how to focus Christmas on Christ which totally took away from celebrating Christ. So this year, if I ever started getting overwhelmed or stressed, I just stopped. If it doesn't get done, it doesn't get done. Which resulted in being able to do a lot more Christ-centered activities with the babies.

We successfully read from the Jesus Storybook Bible and hung an ornament every single night of Advent! Go us! And we got treats to all the neighbors we planned to. French toast casserole on Christmas morning was a fail, but Jesus was okay with that :)

We didn't give our kids gifts (or each other) not only because we're totally broke, but also because they get plenty from the rest of the family, and we don't want them thinking Christmas is about getting gifts. It's about giving gifts. So when they are old enough to earn their own money (which will be this year for Marie and probably Jack through chores), they can buy each family member a gift and we'll buy them gifts.

That's our approach to Christmas in a nutshell. Since Christmas is over and I'm much more focused on bounding into the new year, I won't go into detail. Bottom line, we truly enjoyed celebrating Jesus and both the big kids seemed to, too!

Hope you all had an amazing Christmas! Leave me a link to your Christmas recap so I can catch up!