Christmas Day Jammies

As is our tradition, we spent the night at my sister's home on Christmas Eve. Though the first set of pictures were taken the day before when we were still at home, we planned to all have on our plaid jammies on Christmas morning as well. 

The rest of the pictures are from Christmas morn, of the kids crowding around the tree to take in all the goodness that Santa left for them. And the rest of the pictures are back at home, opening our Christmas crackers, another little tradition carried on from our South Africa days. 

Happy New Year everyone!

 Christmas morn ...

And back home, having some fun with the Christmas crackers. 

 And a picture from Christmas Eve day at church. 

More December Magic

Here's a look at one picturesque Sunday afternoon in December, with Scarlet and her cousin dressed in their Christmas best, tree ornaments turning them into glittering magical unicorns.

 And fort building turning into nap time. 

Hello again friends. It's been a little while.

I have a little bit of our December to share here, mostly because I want to have these photos to look back on in years to come as I'm becoming worse and worse at making my family photo albums and desperately need to catch up. So I hope to squeeze in a couple more posts.

But honestly, December was a really hard month for us and so I'm left completely deflated actually. We lost our beloved Ouma, best known as Debbie, my beautiful mother-in-law and our kids incredibly dear grandmother. I did terribly, handling all of that, maybe even worse as this little bit of time has passed. I think I'd like to write something eventually, but we'll see. It won't be an easy post ... It was really hard.

But mixed into the sadness and the tears, there were some wonderfully sweet moments over Christmas-time, as the season so easily brings. It's impossible to miss the beauty, as it's so sweetly joyous. I wanted to share some of those, as there were many. Not all carefully photographed this year, but still etched into my memory.

Oh, Sweet Christmas Tree

As Thanksgiving weekend draws to a close, I've found a few quiet moments to myself on the couch, a rare opportunity to take in the new twinkling prettiness of our family room. It was a wonderful long weekend with the kids, celebrating Thanksgiving with family and finally allowing ourselves to go completely Christmas-y all over the house. Ahhhh, I love it so. 

My first post of Christmas is all about the morning we went to chop down our Christmas tree. We road tripped out to Whispering Pines and ventured out into the woods to find our favorite tree for the job of decorating our home this season. The kids were all really eager to have a tree of their own to decorate, so we let them each pick out a smaller one too. And after the hunt was finished they fed a few alpacas (cause why not? ;) and warmed up to cups of steamy hot cocoa and bags of popcorn. So here it is, our day in pictures.