ANOTHER FAMILY CHRISTMAS

Tonight we headed over to Rick's parents' house to celebrate Christmas. We had another wonderful time with family - lots of food, lots of presents, lots of laughter.

Our first picture from tonight is of Santa's newest helper ...

Rick's family has a tradition that all presents are passed out to each person and then we open them starting with the youngest child first and proceed to the oldest. It's a nice way to organize present opening and it allows us to see everything each other is getting and to "oooohh" and "aaaahh" with each other. Malia got to go first this year ... and she had another heaping stack of presents. Here she is opening a special gift from Grandma Cindy - a black pearl necklace from China. It's absolutely beautiful, and I got a matching one as well. Rick was in charge of the camera and tried taking a picture of Malia's necklace, but it's a little blurry.

Here's Miss M in her new IU hat, although you can't see the emblem from this angle ...

And, then there's our Spencer. He's such a great kid. Here he is opening one of his presents ...



And here he is wearing his new IU sweatshirt (that I plan to borrow often) ...

And, lastly, here we are opening a big family present ...

... our Je*ep stroller! Rick is doing a great surprise look, isn't he? And Spencer looks a little upset now that he's too big to fit into a stroller and will have to push instead. Either that, or he's just confused.

This is our last Christmas celebration for the year. It's hard to believe they are over once again. All too soon our decorations will be down and our house back to normal. But the memories remain, especially the joys of family traditions that we now begin looking forward to for next year. We pray your Christmas celebrations were filled with joy and love, as ours were.