Christmas recap with pictures and captions

Pictures all out of order:

Christmas morning at our house. Hannah and Olivia opening their new basketball hoop.

Homemade cinnamon rolls, with green frosting of course. We had leftover frosting from cookies and we aren't a family that wastes good frosting.

Christmas morning breakfast on the porch before opening presents.

Much like my family's tradition, we will keep Christmas morning the four of us at our house, and invite whomever wants to come over to enjoy our rolls with us. Hannah also now says "rolls" and requests them daily.

Hannah needed a sticker on her coat before going to the Christmas Eve service. Matt is such a sweet and patient daddy, waiting while Hannah selected to wear Oscar the Grouch while worshipping the Newborn King.

Hannah loves stickers and bandaids. I think I may have mentioned this before. Why did no one advise me to buy stock in stickers and bandaids before we had kids?

Christmas Eve morning, we treated like Christmas morning at Matt's parents house. Aunt Suzy, Uncle Patrick, cousin Kalen were in town so we opened presents with them.

I don't think Olivia got many presents this year. But she just loved the wrapping paper so it didn't matter.

On Christmas morning, Hannah and Olivia had to try out the rocking horse that Kalen bought them. They love it and Hannah can rock so hard on it that it goes across the whole room.

This picture captures how much it takes for two adults, two babies and two doggies to go to Ohio for two days.

A family picture with Hannah's beautiful smile and Olivia looking at the camera! And Matt looking quite good himself.

The more kids in the picture, the harder it gets.

Matt made Olivia scowl at me. He thinks it's hilarious. I think this was taken on my birthday. And Olivia learned to crawl on my birthday. No joke. However, she promptly forgot the next day. And then remembered again today.

Olivia's nicknames include: Livi lou, Livi love, sweet cheeks, baby doll and squishy face. I think she looks like Squishy Face in this picture.

On Sunday the 19th, I dressed the girls in matching velor dresses, white tights and black patent leather mary janes. Adorable. I only wish I could have better captured the moment.

We had a great Christmas. We have a wonderful family, both sides who sacrifice so much for us. Both moms cooked tons of delicious food and cleaned up the kitchen countless times and held babies and changed diapers and wiped noses. We are very grateful for the support we have from two god-fearing families.

Also, hopefully this is the last post I write with our old camera. We received some Christmas money and I think we are taking the plunge and purchasing an SLR. I feel like I never capture the sweet (and fleeting) faces my girls make and I am hoping a better camera equals better pictures. We shall see.

Lastly, my oldest child is freaking hilarious. She learned the phrase "happy birthday" for Papa's birthday. Then my birthday, then Jesus' birthday. She also loves to say "hi" to everything, and because I worked too much last week and I told her a whole bunch of times how much I missed her, she says "I missed you." So now a common sentence in this house is,

"Elmo! Hi Elmo! Happy Birthday, I missed you!"

"Carwash! Hi carwash! Happy Birthday, I missed you!"

"Squirrel outside! Hi squirrel! Happy Birthday, I missed you!"

She has also entered the "dat" stage. Which means she points at things, says "dat", then I say what it is and she repeats it. It makes me laugh because sometimes I want to teach her the wrong word (I don't, promise). Can you imagine not knowing the words to things?