Christmas Time is Here

Daddy read us The Christmas Story from Luke 2. Then we opened our presents. Nora was excited about all the shiny things...it caused her first Christmas injury. She was so excited about all the packages that she lunged from me and hit her eye on the corner of a wrapped gift. She was a little upset but soon a distraction of another gift to unwrap helped her to forget her pain. I love how she wants to rip the bows off all the gifts...and, I love that she laughed and blew bubbles the whole time. I feel like I can hardly wait until she is a bit older and comes running down the stairs to jump in my bed yelling about all the presents that arrived while she was asleep. Today my biggest prayer though is that Nora will be as excited about the little baby born in Bethlehem as she is about the bows, wrapping paper, family time, good food, and gifts. And, I pray that for myself, too.

From the Past...

I've been searching for 2 days to find our Christmas ornaments. Finally, I dug every box out of the upstairs closet and found them in a container that I had looked in many times before - neatly organized and labeled. Neatness and organization are only helpful if you know what you're looking for and where it might be. Anyway, I opened up the ornament box to find a note I'd written:

Dear Amanda in December 2009,
How is it going? Are you okay? Did you have the baby? How did it go? Is it a boy or a girl? Did it come with 2 arms and 2 legs? Do you feel amazingly blessed? Do you work at ECHO? Is Andy at KDL? Do you feel like the pregnancy was a big faith grower for you? I hope so...
love,
Amanda
January 17, 2009

I like that I wrote myself a note. It's very sentimental and thoughtful of me. I really appreciated it. The questions are all rather bland, yet they still brought tiny little tear drops to the corner of my eyes. And, if you're reading this you most likely know the answer to all the questions. The birth went fine, the baby was a girl with two of each extremity. Andy and I are still at our same jobs, and the pregnancy (and then, the birth) was a big faith grower for me. Oh, and I do feel very blessed.
I wonder what I'll write to myself next...probably a to-do list :)

Santa Claus Came to Town...

Nora's first encounter with Santa Claus. I feel a little silly that I put two different colored socks on her this morning, but I couldn't quickly find two matching ones and those baby socks are just so small (and I didn't anticipate her being photographed). So, I decided that since I wear mismatched socks Nora could too - and she didn't care. Now, her first picture with Santa captures that. The picture is pretty funny - Nora seemed a bit confused and Santa was a bit surprised (I think he had been trying to get Nora to smile and was caught off-guard when the photographer snapped the photo.)

Enjoy.

(p.s. smells of the season are permeating our home as there are pumpkin chocolate chip bars baking in the oven. Andy is very excited.)

Red & Green

I'm excited for Christmas. I haven't had a chance yet to decorate anything and we haven't gone to pick out a tree yet. I'm anxious to see how much Nora likes starring at the lights - I hope it will be as much fun as what I anticipate. My mom made a cute, frilly little Christmas dress for me when I was little. Thankfully, she is a sentimental individual who keeps lots of things - including a Christmas dress that I wore 27 years ago. We washed it and put it on Nora. She mostly wanted to eat it, and I mostly wanted to eat her up because she was so cute.