Lauren Elizabeth

Christmas 2017

This was our very first Christmas without visiting family. I was pretty sad going into it knowing that we would miss out on all of the festivities with family. I think it is always hard to be away from family on a special holiday. I think that having a new baby adds to that too. You want everyone to get to meet her and celebrate with you. It was fun for us to decorate our house and get a Christmas tree. Our girls are at such a fun age for Christmas. Violet is old enough to really start to understand the Christmas story. 

We spent a lot of time this Christmas trying to focus on the Savior. We participated in the church's light the world campaign. The girls loved watching the videos associated with it and trying to come up with ways to accomplish each of the goals for the day. We made cookies for our neighbors, videos for our great grandparents and sent texts to people for a few of the days. We watched the movies about Christ's life on mormon.org too. We tried to sing a lot more Christmas songs and talk less about Santa. 

Of course we did all the fun things like Lou Lou the elf. The girls get such a kick out of him and all the fun things Mike does with him. While my mom was here we went to see a Santa with Susie and Javi. Violet really wanted a Jasmin toy this year and Grace never had anything really good. A few times she said cookies and then she would always just tell us what Violet wanted. We drove one night to see a house that had Christmas lights timed to music. The girls really loved that. Mike put icicle lights on our house and that got the girls very excited too.  Our ward Christmas party got snowed out by the snow storm that hit Georgia. It was really fun for the girls. They got to play outside with Mike in makeshift snow clothes since all our stuff is in Utah. They had so much fun and built a big snowman and went sledding on garbage bags down our hill. We tried to watch all the classic Christmas movies with the girls. 

On Christmas eve we went to our church for sacrament and then our ward put on a Christmas eve program with musical numbers and video and speakers. The girls were not really on their best behavior but it was still a good program. They wore their Christmas dresses from grandma and it was Ginny's first time at church. We came home and I had a pretty quick dinner. We called my parents to chat for a bit. Kate read why Christmas trees aren't perfect to the girls over the phone. We watched the nativity on our TV and set out cookies for Santa and carrots for the reindeer. We talked about Jesus and put everyone to bed. Luckily Mike and I had done most of the setting up and wrapping the night before so that all we had to do was arrange things. The next morning I made a big breakfast and we jingled the girls out of bed at 8:00. It was so fun to see them come down the stairs and get excited about everything. The dress ups were a hug hit this year. They also got a dollhouse and castle to play with. My mom and dad got vi a boogi board writing toy that she loves. The new princesses were also a pretty big hit. We opened stockings first and then ate our breakfast. We opened everything slow and let the girls play with things as they opened. It was so nice to take our time and just enjoy the morning. We got the game Guess Who and Violet has loved playing that with Mike. At noon we went over to our friends the Weir's house and had lunch and let the kids play. It was so nice to have someone to get together with. Then we went home and kept playing with toys and called family. I had big intentions of making a large dinner, but in the end I just didn't feel like it. So we had our Christmas dinner a couple days later. It was a really great day and I just love getting to see our girls so excited and using their imaginations and loving life. It was a great parent moment. Ginny was a champ and slept through most of the day. It is really special to have such a small, sweet baby at Christmas time.