Christmas Day

 Christmas day started with Matt and I waking the girls up to tell them St. Nick had brought some gifts to celebrate Baby Jesus' birthday.  We don't make a big deal out of this, just waking them up about 20 minutes early for Mass and letting them check out their stuff and then continuing on with the day.  We've decided to only give three gifts to each child to tie in with the three gifts brought to the baby Jesus by the wise men, plus some sort of candy.  There's plenty of other gift giving going on with all the family members, so we definitely don't need to add any more to it!

 This years three gifts were new bedding for the girls (since they're sharing a room now I thought matching bedding would be nice), a book for each of them, new slippers and they each got a box of gummy bears as their candy.

 Just like last year Melanie just sat there for a while, taking it all in.  As is quite often the case, Claire just followed Melanie's lead.

 Excited to have another new book!

After checking out what St. Nick brought we went to Mass and then to my Grandma and Grandpa Greenlee's house to open gifts with the rest of the extended family.

 It took quite a bit of convincing to get the girls to start opening their gifts since we had once again just talked about giving a gift to Great Grandma and Great Grandpa and didn't mention the receiving end of things. 

 Jamming on Claire's new keyboard

I've resisted allowing one of these in our house for quite some time, but Claire enjoys music so much I just couldn't think of anything she would enjoy more than one of these, and she proved me right.

 Best gift of Christmas?  Play time with dad!

 And Grandpa!

 With Great Grandpa and Great Grandma

After gifts and donuts at my grandparents house we headed over to Matt's Grandma's house for finger foods and some family time.  Once again we were slackers in the photo department, but Melanie really had fun playing with their second cousins and Claire chowed down on Grandma's chex mix and thoroughly enjoyed some summer sausage, cheese and crackers.

I did manage to snap a picture of Claire with her godmother Aunt Katie, and I think it turned out really sweet.

From there we headed to my parents house for Christmas dinner with mom's side of the family.  No pictures were taken whatsoever, but there was lots of good food and family conversation, and the girls of course enjoyed having so many teenagers and adults to play with them.  Overall I'd say we had a very blessed, family and fun filled Christmas.  

And to top it all off, I blogged about it before the new year! 
(Thanks to Matt and Claire taking a nice long nap and Melanie being content with serving me imaginary tea while I sat at the computer typing.  I would insert something here about an imaginary victory dance, but then I'd have to mock myself and my poor dancing skills since I don't dance, and in my occasionally hormonal pregnant state that would be a bit of a buzz kill, so I'll just give myself a virtual pat on the back.)

Merry Christmas everyone! 

See you in the new year!