The Magic of Christmas

We've had a lot of fun decorating for Christmas!

Including decorating each other!
Priceless!

Silver wraps things around her neck -so naturally a string of Christmas lights goes around her neck, this is what started it all!

Our nativity is one of my favorite things we own. It's a great tradition to bring it out every year just after Thanksgiving and set it up with River. River actually took this picture because she likes it so much. Baby Jesus gets moved daily from Mary's arms to the manger. River Loves holding Baby Jesus. She sings him lullabys and rocks him gently. This year she decided Jesus needed a friend (circled at left). Sometimes he gets to share the manger with Jesus, but mostly is another one coming to worship.

We have a beautiful CD with Christmas lullabys on it that plays pretty much non-stop all through the day. I love music in the background. Our girls are much more mellow with good calming music.

Colt's family has a tradition to give the kids an ornament every Christmas. When we got married, we had a whole box of ornaments to decorate our tree with! We use his ornaments every year. It is a fun tree! We have continued the tradition giving each child an ornament for Christmas, and also getting a family ornament each year. It's fun to pull them out and savor the memories. This is Colt telling River about his favorite ornament and when he was a little boy, he'd put this ornament in front of a Christmas light so the light would show through the glass.

All the ornaments go on one branch of course! We've had a lot of fun making snowflakes and paper chains too.

We cut some of the lower branches so River has her own little cave under the tree. Every morning she comes out and plugs in the tree. When it's quiet, I find River under the tree looking at the lights and the ornaments.

Ah, the magic of Christmas in a child's eyes!