Christmas 2015

Our Christmas was calm and enjoyable this year.  We learned that having a child at Christmas time is way more incredible than Christmas as a child is.  Watching Joey's face light up at every Christmas light, ornament, and Christmas decoration filled my heart with joy.  His excitement opening presents Christmas Eve and Christmas Day was super fun to experience.  There truly is nothing like experiencing life through the eyes of a child.

During the day on Christmas Eve, we hung out at home.  We watched Christmas movies, and played.  During the evening, we went to Neal's aunt's house for dinner, singing, and a nativity.  Our dinner was themed around the 12 Days of Christmas song.  Each person was secretly assigned one of the numbers from the song, and had to prepare a dish relating to that number.  On Christmas Eve we all put our dishes out and had a competition to see who could guess which dish applied to which number.  It was fascinating to see the different, creative dishes that people came up with.  I was also pretty excited because I somehow managed to get all 13 dishes right and won the game!  Dinner was delicious.  We then sang Christmas carols as a family, and the kids acted out the nativity while Neal's cousin read Luke 2.

Neal's uncle then read a story about Mary from the eyes of Joseph out of an advent book that Neal's grandma made for us.  I realized something as I was listening to that story - Mary was probably in early labor at some point as she was travelling.  Preparing myself for labor currently, my empathy for Mary increased ten-fold.  It was a pretty incredible experience for me.

On Christmas morning, we got up early and went downstairs and opened presents.  Joey loved everything he was given, and was super excited to hand out the presents to Neal and I.  We then went to Neal's brother's house for brunch and to open presents with Neal's immediate family.  Joey had so much fun playing with his cousins.  We then headed down to my grandma's house for lunch and presents with my extended family.  Last we went to my parent's house so we could open presents with them.  Joey was seriously (but gratefully) spoiled.

We loved feeling near to Christ, and teaching Joey about the birth of our Savior.  The best part is that Joey learned to say "Jesus."  It was a pretty incredible year :)