our christmas 2013

this year, our Christmas was spent at home with just our family. I was so thankful to have my husband here with us on this special holiday, something a military wife should never take for granted. Just for fun, I want to note that my husband has been deployed two of our six Christmases together and I have been pregnant for three out of six Christmases. Just a side note. :) on Christmas Eve, we went to our church's Christmas Eve service (first Christmas services in our beautiful vintage church building in Tacoma!), then came home and enjoyed some delicious appetizers, opened one Christmas gift (slipper for the boys!), and watched a Christmas movie together.

Christmas morning, we all woke up with our normal kiddo routine. we merged traditions for breakfast, eating leftover appetizers from Christmas Eve (my husband's family's tradition) and cinnamon rolls (my family's tradition growing up). We read the Christmas story from the bible together, then we took our time opening gifts and enjoying them along the way. there was no rush, no reason to hurry, so we took things out of the packages, assembled toys and played for a while before moving on. the boys had so much fun. and we had fun watching them. sweet Evelyn Claire's first Christmas was none too involved-- she ate, sat on my lap and watched the action, and napped during most of our gift-opening. next year will be a different story, with three littles running around excited!

since we are 3,000 miles from our families, the day looks a little different. thankfully, we have good family friends who live a mile away. after naps, we headed over to their house for Christmas dinner. they also have two little boys, so the kids ran around and played while we adults chatted the night away. literally. we stayed over til 1am (the kids were already down). it was great fun and a flashback to pre-kid life, but I will be the first to admit that I am not twenty-five anymore. staying up til 1 is way tougher than it used to be!

It was a nice Christmas. I love our family.