Another wonderful Christmas has come and gone. This time of year is certainly fun with young kids around. In the weeks leading up to Christmas we would ask Ellie what Christmas was all about, and she would knowingly answer that Christmas is about Jesus’ birth. Adelaine isn’t really sure what it is all about, but was pretty excited by all the new stuff and the presents. Ethan simply doesn’t care about anything as long as he is fed, changed and allowed to sleep..

We enlisted the help of the girls this year to decorate the tree and around the house.

Ellie was a big help to mommy getting the decorations up on the tree.

Adelaine, not so much.. but at least she had fun playing with the lights.

I think Adelaine was getting electrocuted here.

The end result was very nice:

The girls also helped mommy with a ginger bread house. They also helped themselves to sprinkles on a regular basis.

Finally, Christmas morning came and the girls were very excited. We started the day with the kids opening their stockings followed by breakfast cooked by Dad. After a big un-healthy dad-style breakfast we took time to read the Christmas story with the kids. We have been over the Christmas story many times leading up to Christmas, so the kids are getting quite familiar with it, but we wanted to make sure they put the story together with that special day.
When the reading was done, we got down to the serious business of destroying paper.

There is a new photographer in the house. Ellie got a new camera..

and daddy got a new new lens. (Thanks everyone!)

It is neat to see photos of things from Ellie’s perspective and see what is important to her. I’ve started a new flickr account for Ellie’s photos at http://www.flickr.com/photos/kidsview/

In the end, we had a big mess and a bunch of new presents.

We then went to join family and some new friends in town for the big Christmas meal.

Ethan got passed around a lot.

Later on, we once again read the Christmas story and the kids helped place the nativity pieces and then opened more presents from the rest of the family.

It was a wonderful day as we celebrated Jesus’ birth with our children and family. I hope you had a great Christmas too!