Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas! What a wonderful day! I love the Christmas season and feel so blessed to be able to start sharing that with Peyton! This has been a wonderful first Christmas full of many memories! Yesterday we had John's mom and brother, Ron over for a Christmas Eve lunch before heading to church. Following church we made it over to my parents with the whole gang for snacks and games! It was a great time of fellowship with both families. We ended the night with the traditional reading of the Christmas story, the Night Before Christmas and writing Santa his note. We then headed home and Peyton went to bed to wait for Santa. We woke up this morning at our house and started unwrapping presents. Santa was very good to Peyton this year and mommy and daddy did pretty well as well. You can see some pictures of our day by clicking here but here are some of the highlights. Daddy liked his air compressor with nail gun. I was also informed by Ron that no man's garage is truly complete without one...how did John survive this long?

Then John pulled a sneaky little trick on me...I opened the one gift that I had under the tree that was in a pretty small box (immediately thought jewelery) and found an 8 GB Memory Card...what?

Then Ron came out with another box which based on its size I know was the Cannon Rebel XS SLR camera that I really wanted but really didn't expect to get. I was pretty excited and have spent the day starting to learn how to use it. One of my New Year's resolutions is to develop my desire to do photography. I have always wanted to develop that hobby and never made the time. I have found some classes that I was to take and am planning on taking the first one in February.

We finished up the morning with breakfast at our house and then packed up for a second Christmas at my parents house. We were greeted with more presents from Santa! Peyton was asleep for most of this Christmas celebration despite my planning but she gave me power of attorney to open her presents. Between both celebrations she made out like a bandit and her parents did pretty well as well. She woke up towards the end which was the grande finale...

My dad had a card and small box at the end to give to my mom (John and I knew the gift as it had been at our house since yesterday) but no one else knew. You can see the sequence of events by clicking here but here is a description. She started reading the nice thoughtful card, then opened the little box, had a look of shock on her face and then cried because she had the keys to her 2008 Infiniti G37s! She had been looking for a car and thought that they Here is her posing with her new ride.

We finished today off with a wonderful Christmas dinner. We will be heading home soon to finish getting ready for Canada and then we are out early tomorrow. Hope everyone has a great Christmas. We are so blessed to have such a loving God who would send us his only son to die for our sins so we could have a relationship with him. How beautiful that is!

By the way...we won't have internet in Canada so I will not be updating until we get back on the 31st.