A Very Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas everyone!! We had a great Christmas this year, and hope everyone else had an equally wonderful day. I was so excited to get a digital camera from my parents and I'm finally able to post pictures again. I spent most of the day on Christmas playing with it and trying out all the features, so I got a lot of crummy pictures, but also a lot of great ones. I didn't have my digital until the afternoon, though, so I missed all of Christmas morning. Maybe someday I'll actually get the film developed from my dinosaur of a camera and post those pics as well.
Maura loved Christmas!! She was almost overwhelmed when she came down and saw her presents on Christmas morning. She spent about 20 minutes with the first toy before we could convince her to even look at anything else. In fact, we ended up packing up most everything and taking with us to my parents house for her to open throughout the day. She's been so busy playing with everything that she just finished opening her last two presents yesterday!!

I think this sign about sums it up. We're so blessed to live in this country, enjoy all our freedoms, worship God and enjoy our holidays in warmth and ease. We are lucky to have all we do. We really enjoyed our families this year, especially getting to enjoy the holiday with Maura and thinking about our son being a part of the celebration next year.

Katie and her boyfriend, Scott. He came down to spend the evening with us. This is their first "official" picture. Aren't you guys lucky to see it!

Here we are. I'm really starting to feel big and pregnant and Brent looks like death warmed over. He was REALLY sick on Christmas Eve with a stomach virus and only mildly better on Christmas. All the pictures of my family that you see were taken just prior to them all falling deathly ill with the same virus on the 26th. Thanks for sharing, Brent!!

Mom and Dad enjoying having the whole family together. This is the first time all of us have been together at Christmas for 3 years. Lorie and I have been on opposite schedules with switching holidays, so it was nice to just all be able to get together this year. It's quite the event with so many people, though. I think we opened presents until about 3:00 in the afternoon!!

Maura with her Aunt Lorie. She really enjoyed having all her aunts and uncles around. It gave her a huge audience to show off for and to parrot what they were saying. She's learned that adults think it's funny when she parrots back what they say. What a personality!

Maura with her favorite present of the day. My parents got her this trampoline and she just loved it. She jumped for at least a half hour and got extremely agitated when my brother and brother-in-law tried to prop their feet on it. Unfortunately it's tall and hasn't made it's way to our house yet, so it'll probably be like Christmas all over again when it finally gets here.

Jumping, jumping, jumping!! She just had a ball. Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to everyone. We love you!