So This is Christmas!

Christmas 2012 was fabulous. My children make holidays so much more magical than they were before. I love their excitement and their contagious enthusiasm.

Here are a few, okay a TON, of photos from our festivities.

Andrew's class had a pajama party on the last day of school before Christmas break. He was just a little pumped about it!

We headed out to my parents' place on Christmas Eve and thought we'd try to go see Santa at the Bass Pro Shop. Well apparently he's a very popular Santa because the line was way longer than we were willing to wait.

So we had photos with consolation Frosty.

And then we hung out in a fishing boat. :)

It was a great {country} outing!

The weather was beautiful on Monday and they were forecasting cold rain, wind and snow for Tuesday so Santa was super thoughtful and brought the kids' big gifts a day early.

A batmobile! {And a mini Cooper for my nephew.} They had SO MUCH fun!

This was all Andrew wanted for Christmas, and it's a good thing it came a day early because Christmas day was indeed stormy and windy and snowy. They would have been so sad to get these cars and then not be able to do anything with them.

We're home now. Brian is off of work until after New Years so we're enjoying some much needed family time and working on some projects around the house.

It still looks like this here though.

Incorporating new toys and new stuff is hard, yo. I'm kind of ready to put all the Christmas stuff up and get back to normal.

Not normal? Snow in Dallas. I think it was our first white Christmas in over 30 years! So cool!

I'm so thankful for my family and our time together. I love that we spent Christmas with my sister and her family so the cousins were all together. I'm also thankful it was cold. It doesn't seem right when it's still warm at Christmas, and I'm glad we didn't have that this year.

But mostly I'm thankful for our Savior's birth and God's unending grace which is new each and every day.