A Christmas to Remember

I love Christmas!  I love everything about this time of year (well, almost everything). Yes, it can be filled with stress and craziness if we lose sight of the true reason we're celebrating...the birth of Jesus Christ.  But if you can just keep your focus, it can be so magical.  It is such a special time of year filled with love and joy, giving and receiving, hugs and laughter.  It is covered with lights and trees, sweets and treats, music and parties.  And this year, God added two very special little girls to our family who brought a whole new light to the holiday season.  I hope we are always able to make it special and meaningful for these little angels we have been blessed with. 

These are the Christmas Cards/Birth Announcements that we sent out this year!  As silly as it sounds, this is one of the many things I dreamed about doing when I was struggling to get pregnant...to be able to send out a family Christmas card.

Thanks Melanie Johnson for your fabulous work, as ALWAYS!!!

On Christmas Eve, we were blessed with the gift of time!  Heather was so sweet and offered to watch the girls so we could attend the Christmas Eve service at our church.  This is actually something I have never done and am so thankful that I was able to this year.  Thank you Heather for being so good to us :)

Kevin and Sophie came over after we got home from church so that they could pick Heather up and go to the next church service. And guess what we did before the left?!  Yep, we had a quick photo shoot :) And for all of you who are questioning the fact that Sophie came to our house despite our no kid rule....don't worry, she was only there a couple of minutes and we kept her separated from the twins :)

Christmas Eve 2011

I LOVE my family!

 Have to capture the ENTIRE family :)

Enough pictures mom, PLEASE just hold me!

Miss Sophia checking everything out!

LOVE this family of FOUR (see the itty bitty tummy....that's #4) :)

Had to get my Sophie snuggles...I love this kid!

Within a few minutes after they left, we finished up our photo session.  OR, we spent the next couple of hours trying REALLY hard to get a good picture of the girls in their Christmas dresses (which were way too big; size 3 months when they were wearing preemies at the time).  They were NOT happy campers which is evident in several of the pictures in the slide show below.  However, we did manage to get a few pretty good ones and here is one of my favorites. Although you can tell Avari has been crying, they are at least both content at the moment and somewhat looking in the general direction of the camera. What more can we ask for :)

Since we weren't able to go home for the holidays and we had already ordered a holiday meal recently, we decide we would take the time and actually cook a Christmas dinner for ourselves.  And if I do say so myself, it was DEE-LICIOUS :) We made chicken and dumplings, ham, potato casserole, corn, sweet potato casserole, five cup salad, rolls, and pecan pie.  This sure didn't help me lose any of that baby weight but man, it was so tasty!

Even the girls joined us for dinner :)

The girls decked out in their adorable Christmas pj's!

Whoa is me...

Cuddling with the Mom!

Loving on the Dad!

Merry Christmas Sister!

The night would not have been complete without at least getting to see some of our family and that is why we are so thankful that Kristin and Ricky were able to come and visit us later on that night!  This was Aunt Kristin's first time to hold the girls and I know she was loving it....and so were they!

Sweet snuggle time with our Aunt & Uncle :)

We love these guys!!

 Our First Christmas Burp Cloths :)

I actually think this was taken on a different day but I just had to include it!!!! They all must be VERY tired :)

This truly was a Christmas that we'll treasure always.  After all, it was our daughters very first Christmas ever!  I can't wait to see their reactions to everything next year....since they'll be ONE YEAR OLD!!!  Oh my....