Christmas!

After more than 5 years over here this was our first Christmas without visitors!  I think we've been pretty unique with all of the visitors that we've had so we weren't too surprised that this year finally came along. 

We really had a nice Christmas!  We definitely missed our families!  But we've also been blessed with good friends here that we were able to celebrate with - I'm so thankful!! 

Another fun aspect of this year that I think helped to distract us from being "alone" is that Katie is at such a fun age to really enjoy the fun of Chrsitmas - the presents, the TRUE story, the lights, the tree, the excitement of it all!  And of course Carly follows right along with her big sister so we had two super fun, excited girls this year!

Unfortunately I didn't do a very good job of taking pictures (like ONE on Christmas Eve!), but here are some that I did take.  Enjoy!

On Christmas Eve we had a family over that is here for a year learning the language and then they're on their way to Africa.  This was their first Christmas away from "home."  They have kids the same ages as our girls so they all had a blast playing together and exchanging gifts.  We did my family's tradition of hot chocolate and cookies and reading the Christmas Story together.  With a 5 year old, two 4 year olds and two 2 year olds we went with a kid's version and read it quickly!  Attention spans are short! 

Before bed our girls left cookies for Santa.  Yum!

Thanks for the Christmas PJs, Uncle Tim!

Christmas morning!  We did NOT feel the need to wake the girls up early!  We got up when they did (yeah!) and then we took our time opening gifts.  We opened a few, played, ate cinnamon rolls, opened some more, played, until we were done.  It was a lovely, fun, lazy morning!

 A train set!  Getting ready for a BOY in the house, I guess!  The girls love it!

 Yum!  Cinnamon Rolls!

 Investigating...  Who's name is on this one???

 New blocks!  These girls LOVE to build with their daddy!

My sister, Teri, made this amazingly sweet book for the girls!  She made it as a way for the girls to get to know something special about each of their relatives - since we live far away and don't get to be together nearly as often as we like.

 It's so cute!  We've been having fun reading it together!

Well, that's where the pictures end.  Bummer.  The rest of the day was really fun too (and we eventually changed out of our pjs!).  We went over to some American friends' house and our Australian friends came over too.  Between our 3 families there are 7 girls - and one boy!  I think that one boy will enjoy having another boy around in a few months!  We're all over here without family this year and we had a great time hanging out and being family for each other.  One of our friends took some great pictures of the kids doing their gift exchange and they're on my FB page so check them out there, grandparents!  :-)