christmas

The morning of Christmas Eve we went with some friends to the Redmond Town Center outdoor mall and took Brooklyn on the carousel. She actually enjoyed it! Usually she wants nothing to do with it and ends up on one of the benches rather than a horse.

Later that evening she made a beautiful picture for Santa.

This was our first Christmas on our own as our own little family. We had been talking about what sorts of traditions we should make and one that we came up with was making pizza. Brooklyn helped Mommy roll out the dough...

And she wanted to help Daddy put the cheese on.

Hmmmm. Wonder why.

:)

We went with pretty basic pizzas. A four-cheese blend...

...and the classic pepperoni. Both were very tasty.

Brooklyn got to open a couple presents on Christmas Eve. One of them was a movie -- it was the Charlie Brown Christmas movie! She loved the book Grandma Taylor got her so Laura thought she'd like the movie too -- and she was right!

After the movie we got out the scriptures and read from Luke 2 in the Bible. We had Brooklyn play along with her little nativity set. It was pretty darn cute.

Austin went and got his guitar out and we sang a handful of Christmas songs together.

Then we all opened our Christmas Eve presents -- Christmas jammies! We had to snap a quick family photo via the camera timer.

We helped Brooklyn get out some cookies for Santa...

...perfect! What a lucky guy.

And he didn't disappoint -- look what was by the tree in the morning!

And he found our stockings without a chimney or fireplace! How does he do that?! ;)

We had a very excited little girl once we went and got her out of bed.

She's gotten good at reading her name so she knew exactly who it was for!

It was fun watching her discover all the little parts and pieces and knobs.

Santa left a nice note for Brooklyn... and somehow managed to eat all four Trader Joes cookies!

Speaking of too much yumminess, we wanted to do a nice Christmas breakfast as a tradition. We had cinnamon rolls, fresh pineapple, eggs, and bacon. So good!

After breakfast we finally got around to opening presents. Brooklyn loved looking for the names on the tags and passing out presents to open.

She was good at helping open presents...

...and good at letting Mom and Dad help her open her presents. It was lots of fun.

We all got new Toms shoes again this year -- this time Daddy and Brooklyn kind of match!

Brooklyn is definitely entering the princess stage, and the outfit from Jenna was such a hit that it had to be worn immediately. She has a couple cute pajama dresses that she calls her "princess jammies" but this gives new meaning to that term.

Cars! It's her favorite movie and we had been looking for characters from the first movie in the toy aisles whenever we go to Target. We lucked out on a few occasions, the big score being a two-pack with Lightning McQueen and Sally that we thought we'd never find!

When we were looking for cars for B, Austin had been making comments about Legos, so Laura tipped Jenna, who had his name in our gift rotation this year. (Austin said that between the Legos and a pair of Nikes he got, it was definitely a throwback Christmas.) He found a cute little Lego Duplo zoo set, which made for a super cute Lego duo on Christmas morning!

Laura made an extremely tasty Christmas dinner -- ham, potatoes, fresh green beans, rolls, and apple cider! It took a lot of time but it was great.

Finally, later in the evening on Christmas Day, we met some friends who also stayed home for Christmas and went to a botanical garden in Bellevue that does lots of Christmas lights. It was fun. Though we all admitted that once you've been to Temple Square in Salt Lake City, about any Christmas lights display pales in comparison... :)

We had a great Christmas and it just kind of worked out that it was our first time celebrating with just our little family. We had a great time keeping traditions we grew up with and adding a couple of our own.

We frequently asked Brooklyn whose birthday Christmas was. She only got it wrong once. It was fun teaching her about Christ's birth and watching her interpretation of the nativity whenever she played with her little set. We love this season of the year and the opportunity to be just a little bit closer to the Savior and the people we love most.