This year Christmas was a little different. And I will admit, I was very sad about all the differences. First off, my grandma had been in the hospital twice since Thanksgiving day. After she left the second time, she was sent to rehab with no chance of actually being home for Christmas. That meant, that although the plan was that we would spend time with her on Christmas Eve, we wouldn't get to spend as much time with her - and not only that, she would be spending a lot of her holiday in rehab and not with us. Then to top that off, we found out the day before Christmas that Meredith had strep and both girls tested positive for the flu. This news meant that we could not chance having the girls around my grandma who was still weak nor did we want them around Landon or especially baby Carter. So suddenly, our typical Christmas Eve that consisted of Christmas Eve service and the evening with the Geurin family, turned into a day at home. To make it a little easier on me (and my very sad mama) I went, by myself, over to the Geurin celebration on Christmas Eve day, but it just wasn't the same. We were blessed to have a great time with our family of four and that the girls were actually doing really, really well - hardly acting sick at all (of course that made it hard to stay home, feeling like maybe they were fine after all!)
While spending time at home on Christmas Eve we had some fun making Gingerbread houses.
After that slightly different Christmas Eve, we got the girls to bed in time for Santa to come for a visit.
Santa must have thought we were pretty good this year!
The girls were super surprised that Santa brought them a Barbie Dream House - he had promised them he had an idea for them that he knew they would like but that wasn't on their list, and boy was he right!
Meredith wrote a note to Santa on Christmas Eve with a special request. I planned to purchase a new stocking for Piper this year, but was never able to find one that I liked. I finally decided that she could share Coki's stocking. The problem: it had Coki's name on it. No big deal, I would ask Gigi to fix it, since she was the master of stocking names at our house. But with all the craziness with Grandma and hospitals and everything else, it just didn't happen. We assured the girls that Santa would still know that the stocking was for Piper. But in Meredith's Christmas Eve note, she asked Santa to use "his magic" to put Piper's name on the stocking. Now, without magic, Santa might have been a little overwhelmed by the fact that he did not have any appropriate materials for this request - especially since reusing the piping on Coki would be difficult since it was a shorter name, or that he might have felt that finding this request the night of when he still had an entire Barbie house to assemble might have made this request out of the question. But Santa came through and Meredith (and Piper) were so excited!
Meredith and the magic stocking!
Piper was maybe a little more excited about what was in the stocking than the name, but I am sure she appreciated Meredith's request!
Piper thinks her first Christmas was pretty great!
Every year, we all wear Christmas PJs and take a self-timed family pic. This year we tried and tried to get one that included our wiggly puppy. Then we gave up. And then....
Puppy Photobomb! Perfect - it is a framer!
No Piper, but still a cute (sleepy) family shot!
The girls each got new jackets - Meredith's is a green Teen Beach Movie-inspired biker jacket and Jillian's is a Fresh Beat Band Rockstar jacket that I "made" (and by that I mean decorated!)
Meredith fell in love with Toys R Us' version of an American Girl doll because her name was Meredith. When she started requesting a Meredith doll, Jillian insisted she get a Jillian doll. Problem: there isn't a Jillian! Luckily, we have photoshop and I doctored up her name tag in the box and voila! Kendall became Jillian (shhhh!)
After our family time, we headed over to the Hanks house to celebrate with them and eat a yummy brunch.
The girls by the Hanks Tree.
Later in the day, we were able to finally celebrate with my parents. It was really bitter sweet - of course it was a great time, it was just hard doing it without the rest of the family.
Meredith got one of her big asks - a Flutterbye Fairy
And Jillian's most requested item - A Tinkerbell "Rolling House" (aka camper)
We finished up the evening with a Cookie Cake celebrating Jesus' birthday!
