Man, oh man this Christmas was a fun one! This was Jack’s third Christmas, and it was the first one so far where he was genuinely excited to open gifts. I feel like Christmas is SO much more fun when you get to watch your own kids receive presents and have a blast!

In addition to the fun of opening gifts and celebrating Christmas traditions (setting up the tree, drinking egg nog, reading Christmas books, wearing reindeer antlers, etc.), we also made sure to focus on the true meaning of Christmas with Jack. This was the first year that Jack really began to understand why we celebrate Christmas. We talked a lot about Jesus being born and read the story from the Bible all throughout the month. There were times I doubted my teaching skills when I would randomly ask him who was born on Christmas and he would say, “I don’t know,” but I think he overall understood the real reason for the season. :-)

In addition to celebrating Christmas with my parents who came into town, it seems like we spent most of the month at one Christmas get together or another! From our small group, to MOPS, to the MOPS leadership team, to several different church groups, we partied all month long! It was fun.

We also celebrated James’ 30th birthday at the beginning of the month! With his birthday always being so close to Christmas, I wanted to make sure he got a legit celebration out of it. We dined with friends the night before and I made him one of his favorite meals the day after. On the actual day he was working at church, so I took his favorite dessert up there as a little surprise. He said it was his favorite birthday ever!

Josh turned 4 months in December and really became so interactive! He loves playing with his little toys and thinks big brother Jack is funny. :-) He started rolling over on his belly during sleep times this month, which caused some disruptions for the first couple of weeks, but is back to normal now (he’s completely unswaddled now). We are loving seeing his little personality come out!

And last but not least, the biggest event for me this month was having knee surgery. :-( Womp, womp. Turned out that the physical therapy was not enough to get rid of the issues I was having, so a couple days before Christmas I had a partial meniscectomy (trimmed my meniscus). The timing actually worked out great because we were not planning to travel anywhere this year and my parents were already planning to come into town. They were a huge help watching the kiddos, and I got to take it (kinda) easy for a few days!

Here’s to looking forward to what’s to come in 2016!!!!!

(Our pic this month ended up being an iPhone one. I did remember to get out my “real” camera on Christmas day, but apparently failed at remembering to get a shot of the four of us with it. Oh well! You win some, you lose some).