The Gifts of Christmas

We celebrated Christmas a bit differently this year.  Tia had a very important appointment in Maricopa Christmas morning, so we decided to open all our gifts Christmas Eve so she could be with us.  We had so much fun and decided that our family enjoys the festivities much more at night, than early in the morning!  We got comfy in our pj's and played Yahtzee together (the game Tia got from our gift exhange game earlier in the evening).  The kids had a hard time focusing on the game due to the anticipation of opening gifts, but we were able to hold them off until 11:30pm. 

This is what Curt surprised me with!  All my babies pictures!

I can't stop looking at them...

Can you guess who is who?

I think this might be my favorite picture of all time...

each of my kids holding their own baby picture.  It brings tears to my eyes to think that they are all growing up so fast!

The girls with their new purses, the boys in their new jackets, loving the new electric motorbike.

I will spare you the many, many crazy pictures that were posed on this thing during the early morning hours!

We all went to bed way too late, slept in the next morning and had a delicious brunch with timely visits from Grandma Charlene and Grandpa and Grandma Clark.

We all agreed that this was an awesome Christmas in every way.  We are so blessed to have what we have, know what we know, and to have each other.  By unanimous vote, we will be celebrating this way again next year.  It just seems to work with teenagers and plus, we look a whole lot better in the pictures!

P.S.  We are happy to report that the work of spreading the gospel in Florence, Italy is going well and that the missionaries serving there are happy and healthy and working hard. This was by far Tia's best and most anticipated Christmas gift...maybe of all time!