The Wood Family: Christmas 2011

Payton's third Christmas and Harper's first have come and gone. We had a wonderful few days celebrating with family. Of course I spent the two days after Christmas cleaning out and reorganizing to make room for all their new loot. Seeing Christmas from their eyes truly gives us a new prospective. I love seeing the excitement, anticipation, and smiles that come along with the holiday. While we do Santa Claus, presents, and all that goes along with that, we have also tried to instill with Payton the true meaning of Christmas. Payton again loved her nativity set again this year, along with reading her stories that tell about the meaning of Christmas. Her favorite decorations that she would point out were often a nativity scene. Of course the Sunday before Christmas Payton got to celebrate Jesus' birthday with a party at 8:30 a.m. Yes, full of cupcakes and juice boxes. I suppose it was for a good cause.

This was an attempt at getting a picture of them both in their matching shirts. Much easier said than done!

We made a quick stop by Jonathan's uncles house on Christmas Eve to visit with his family and Granny.

That night we had our annual get-together at my parent's house with my family.

Christmas morning was a little different this year. Payton and Harper's fan club came to them to see what Santa brought to our house. Harper woke up about 5:30. We let Payton sleep until about 6:00 and she finally started stirring. She was very reserved at first, but loved all of the dress up clothes, books, and baby doll that Santa brought. She was equally excited about Harper's diapers, formula, and baby doll. After exploring all that Santa brought, they opened a few things from us. Harper got to open her presents that Payton picked out especially for her- a tiny teddy bear and a ball. We found a letter next to Jingles that Santa delivered while he was at our house. In his note, he told Payton to go outside and see one more surprise. She walked outside to find her very own trampoline in her backyard. Luckily (since we were up at the crack of dawn) the rain had not yet started so she was able to jump for a bit.
All ready for Santa...

Watching Payton on the camera waiting for her to make a move so we can go wake her up!

Payton's stash

Harper's stash

These rings that came with her dress up trunk just might have been her favorite of all of her presents. Note to self...

Next we headed to Bamama and Grandaddy's house to open presents with them and Uncle Andy. (I failed to mention that even Uncle Andy woke up at 6 a.m. to come see what Santa brought. If you know Andy, you know how big of a deal that is!) We all got a lot of fun things, and packed up ready to head to my grandmother's house in Waverly.

As always, we had a yummy breakfast and enjoyed playing and lounging around.At one point Bamama mentioned that she wasn't sure if she could host Christmas this year. I think it goes without saying that we were all thrilled that she was able to do it.....there are just some traditions that are hard to break. I don't ever remember a single Christmas morning that we didn't have breakfast at her house.

After coming back from Waverly, we dropped Daddy off at his mom's house to use his new Christmas present to cook the turkey. The girls and I all crawled in our beds and took a much needed nap before things started back up. We had Christmas dinner at Nana and Pop's house. Of course it was full of chaos and lots of food, but so much fun.

These are the only pictures that we have from Christmas as a family. The first one absolutely cracks me up because it's how I feel about 90% of the time.

We didn't get to see Pawpaw on Christmas since he was down in Foley visiting everyone down there. We headed to Montgomery this past Saturday for him to take us on a ride around the golf course. Payton and Harper loved riding on the golf cart with him. We had so much fun enjoying the beautiful day and seeing where he works every day. Unfortunately I didn't take any pictures that day, but here is one of my very favorite pictures ever.