Holiday Traditions

Surprisingly, Matt and I have been married for 7 years and never once have had the chance to wake up in our own home on Christmas morning...well this year was different! We are finally settled after many moves. Just to rundown how many times I have packed and unpacked:
1)married and moved in to town home in '02 in Lexington
2) then moved to a house we built in Lexington '04
3)had Ava and moved to Lubbock, TX May '06
4)moved home to KY for 8 weeks July '06
5)moved to Amarillo, TX August '06
6)moved home to KY to live with the Maguet's December '08
7)moved into our new home March '09
If I am counting correctly we averaged moving one time a year...I am soooo glad to finally be settled so that we can begin our own family traditions!
One of those traditions included placing our "special ornaments" on this tree while explaining what each of them means to the kids. For example, we have an ornament to represent our marriage, another for each of the kid's first Christmas (including Adelide and Belle), our time in Texas...on and on. I thought it would be nice if we made it a Christmas Eve tradition to decorate a tree together with the ornaments that are special to us. It also opens a few doors to talk to the kids (as they get older) about losing their sisters and our travels as a family. Obviously, we are going to have to use a bigger tree next year, as we have already accumulated a lot of ornaments from vacations and other special events.

Our very bare tree before beginning!Our "special ornament tree" is really full!- Ava loved hearing all of the stories

I was so excited to have the kids wake up on Christmas morning in our new house. We told them that Santa would only come if they stayed in their beds. We thought that Ava would be up with the sun, but surprisingly they both had to be woken up around 10!!

Opening stockings

We had to wake up Miss Berkeley, too!

Tal got his very own laptop, so maybe he will leave mine alone!!

Ava got A LOT of princess stuff this year!

Playing with all of his new Christmas toys

Already dressed in a princess outfit!

Just a picture to show how long Tal's hair has gotten...I want desperately to cut it, but Matt thinks he looks "cool"--jury is still out...