Christmas

I know I said that Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday but I was lying. Or at least it was a partial truth. Christmas has to be tied for first. I just love it for completely different reasons. Of course the actual day is lovely (and eve, so maybe two days). But so is the entire month leading up to it. The count down, if you will. I love the whole month of advent. I love the gift planning/shopping/scheming/wrapping nearly as much as the opening of gifts. The Christmas card receiving! The baked goodies. The lights (including these lovely ones a few miles away). The decorations. The gingerbread houses. The Christmas Eve Service. All the traditions. The time spent with friends and family. And of course, embedded in everything is the reason for the season, the celebration of Jesus' birth. There is much to love about Christmas.

This year was a pretty relaxing Christmas for us. We spent Christmas Eve and a little bit of the morning with my family. Since it was the Vaughn family "off year", my sister and brother spent their Christmases far away...with their in-laws. This left just my parents, our little family, and Ethan to celebrate Christmas Eve together. We invited our new friends, the Blomgrens to join us. It was a wonderful, relaxing day...

Clara absolutely adores her "Uncle E"...

She threw the worst napping fit I've ever witnessed on Christmas Eve and ended up sleeping for two hours straight with Grampy on the recliner. Looks comfortable, huh?

Here are Kelly & I with our little girls (Norah is fifteen months) in their Christmas outfits. How is it that I didn't manage to capture any family pictures?

Our little necky lover.

Grampy reading to the girls.

Here are a few from Christmas morning. As you can see, she was quite thrilled with her new baby doll and elmo slippers from grammy and grampy.

Then we loaded up our car for the .5 mile drive to Jonathan's parent's house. There we spent the whole day as a family eating well, opening presents, playing games and enjoying a relaxing day.

Miss Sophia was excited about all the action.

And both the girls had a fabulous time opening presents, sharing/stealing them from one another, and playing like mad. This Christmas was much more exciting than last year, let me tell you!

A lovely little Christmas dinner spread.

And of course the Hook family traditional talent show. This year Clara stole the show with her lovely Jingle Bell performance.

A great finale to our evening, which pretty much summarizes our stage in life with little ones: All eight of us gathered round the laptop to watch Elmosong, yet again, on youtube.

And it seems that after a long weekend of fun-filled time with family that I realize, yet again, that we did a pretty ridiculously bad job with pictures this year. Has anyone figured out how to fully enjoy their day/relax while carrying the camera around their neck constantly to capture all the great moments? As for me, I usually resort to yelling at my husband to... "Get the camera! Hurry! Take a picture. No, from that angle! Shoot. You missed it". And I'd rather if my tendency was not this way. Do help, if you have ideas. Besides hiring a full-time family photographer, of course.