Another wonderful Christmas!

We began the Christmas holiday by attending candlelight service at church.

                        We were able to get a few wonderful family photos before the service began.

Christmas morning, we sang Happy Birthday to Jesus, ate monkey bread and started the timer to open a gift every 8 minutes. In between opening gifts, we played lots of Mexican Train!

Claire got us all matching Elf pajama pants to lounge in all day long! They are super soft and comfortable!

Claire and her girls!

Claire got most of the things on her wish list this year (it was very short!). She was excited to get this Jesus Loves You sweatshirt!

She was very excited to get a new swim bag since the zippers on her bag are broken and all rusted!

She also really liked this purple sweatshirt!

I just had to get Jeff a captain's hat to wear on the boat this next spring and summer! Since we go boating often now, I thought it was the perfect gift! Hope he isn't too embarrassed to wear it! We are so grateful for a wonderful family day celebrating the birth of our Savior and the many, many, many blessings He has provided to our family! We look forward to what God is going to do in 2024!

 

Happy Birthday Jesus!

Happy Birthday Jesus! Claire continued with the tradition of baking a birthday cake for Jesus to celebrate His birthday on Christmas Day! I love that this is still a very important part of Christmas for her! She was not interested in me taking pictures of her at work however!

                                                                Her finished masterpiece!

Then on Christmas morning, we light the candles and sing Happy Birthday before we eat breakfast, which is always monkey bread!

 

Pics of Claire and Abigail at Christmas

We had a wonderful time with Abigail and her mom today getting some fun pictures, eating lunch, and catching up. So thankful for the friendship we all share!

 

Claire and Abigail's photo shoot attempt!

The girls got together today to get some photos, eat lunch, and exchange Christmas presents. They found some pictures on Pinterest and wanted to re-create them....

there were lots of laughs and they didn't quite turn out like the pictures they were trying to mimic!

 

Kids Crazy Christmas Show with Palmer

We took Palmer, a little girl Claire babysits for, to a puppet show at our church the other evening. It was so much fun!

Palmer's facial expressions were the best! She was so engaged in the program and seemed to really enjoy the puppets!

 

High school champs meet and Fleet Age Group Champs meet

Claire and Abigail both qualified for the High School Champs meet in November and they both did an awesome job!

Claire's coach was so excited when Claire came in first in the 500 freestyle and dropped over 6 seconds, she started doing a dance!

These two girls should be very proud to make it into a high school varsity champs meet in 9th grade! 

Claire qualified for the Age Group Champs meet for Fleet this year and it was held at the A&M pool! Very fun to swim here and to be on campus for a bit!