Merry Christmas!

This Christmas was very low key for us. Nathan and I were feeling a little Scrooge-ish I think with the upcoming move and basically all we did was put up the Christmas tree! We also spent an evening making our own Christmas ornaments, which is a separate post. We rationalized that Shane isn't old enough to really know what's going on.

I had a tough time this Christmas, struggling with the materialism of a holiday I used to love. Nathan's family goes all out at Christmas time and even though I know, I KNOW that Christmas is not about the gifts I still always feel guilty that was don't spend/give as much. We can't. I don't believe in it even if we could. And this Christmas? This Christmas we didn't have anything to spend. So I did home made gifts, because I already had the supplies and what I didn't have I got for under $10. I was really nervous about how the homemade gifts would be received but they actually seemed to be well-liked! And I was pretty happy with them too.

Anyway we had a nice Christmas and I hope that all of you did as well.  On Christmas Eve we let Shane open his gift from us, which was actually his birthday present that I didn't give him because he got SO many toys.

Christmas morning I made chocolate chip pancakes as a special treat. I even got out some real Maple Syrup that I found at Walmart of all places! This northern girl can't stand that fake grodiness.

Then we got dressed up and went to church. Shane rocked the tux he wore to his uncle's wedding. I should've let the arms and legs back down, I didn't realize he's grown so much in just a few months! Everyone thought he was adorable in his tux. He was having a really rough morning and cried for ten minutes after I left him in the nursery, so I spent the service playing with him. I was sad to miss communion but happy to spend some sweet time with my boy.

From church we went to my in-laws house where I helped with lunch. Once more of Nathan's family got there we ate lunch, then opened up gifts.

 This was the first thing Shane opened.  He was so excited, he just wanted to play with his toys as he opened them but he has such a large stack that we had to move him along a little.

 Once Shane finished opening his presents, he helped me open mine.  He certainly got into the unwrapping part of Christmas this year!

 As a kid growing up my parents took a picture of us with our presents each year so I thought I would do that with Shane. I like to look back even to this day and remember my favorite gifts! I couldn't get Shane to stand with his presents without playing with them, but here are the gifts he got from Nathan's family. See the tall tower car ramp thingy? We are leaving that in the box until we move, so that he has something to keep him occupied while we unpack.

 These are the gifts from us. The car ramp was his birthday present. The book is really sweet, it's called "I Love it When You Smile" and I found it at the dollar store along with the coloring book. The truck were Daddy's pick.

 This is one of my favorite of the gifts Shane got. It's a little outfit with Navy emblems on the shirt, T-shirt, and jeans.