Our Christmas

Christmas morning at our house begins with a yummy breakfast (cinnamon rolls, spinach quiche & grapefruit). Then we immediately proceed to our stockings, which very well may be our favorite part of Christmas :)

Alathea had to make sure Abigail knew "this" one was hers (and not the other way around)

Alathea was excited and grateful for everything! Even sippy cups :)

She also kept a close watch on what Abigail received :)

Joe is so sweet and gets me a new globe every year...this is one of my favorites 

We lost Abigail pretty early on to toys...

We kept things pretty simple in the gift department this year. Joe & I bought each other new tennis rackets (its the one sport we can actually play together). We also open one gift at a time and all watch each other while the gift is being opened. It makes each gift more meaningful and it makes the present opening last longer too!

At our house we give the girls 3 gifts each. We'd like to do "1. Something Needed 2. Something wanted & 3. Something to read". We kinda stuck to that :) I have to confess that one of Abigail's was an old glow-worm of Alathea's. It hadn't been played with in almost a year and I replaced the batteries. Abi loves it. We got a good laugh when Alathea proclaimed, "Abigail, I have a glow worm too!" We kept Alathea distracted so she didn't try to find hers :)

Alathea got a small princess figurine set which was her favorite. But a 2nd favorite for both girls had to be the book they each got from us. After everything was opened  all that Alathea wanted to do was read her new books.

So 4 stockings and many gifts (all opened one a time- it took quite a while :) later....

this is what we had to show for it:

Our Family Christmas day

After the morning spent with just our family, we headed to Joe's parents house after Abigail's morning nap and had Christmas gifts take two...

Alathea with her great-grandmother Mere & her dog Monique

The Lechners 2008

Grammy with her wiggly little babies.

Christmas 2008 has been wonderful and besides missing my family, it was one of my favorites. I think because the girls are old enough to really enjoy it and Joe was home for 5 straight days! We thought hard and couldn't remember ever in our 6 years of marriage that he was home for that long (any time he is off work, we are gone on vacation). So that was a real treat. It was like a "home vacation". Alathea cried today as he drove to work. I think she really loved having him home too :)