Christmas-ing, Part 1

The Christmas season is upon us and we had with a busy weekend last weekend beginning with our small group Christmas party. We enjoyed lots of laughs during our annual white elephant exchange. Our small group is so very important to us - these dear people are like family at this point and we have all been through so much together. We love being able to celebrate this time of year with them and we look forward to growing old and gray together as long as they will continue to have us.
Saturday night we went to the Jen extended family party at my parents' house. Here is my Grandma and her 14 great-grandchildren...the newest one is 4 days old in this picture and there is one more coming soon (my cousin and her husband are looking forward to picking up their daughter from China sometime early next year).
This is always a busy time of the year for us and we are trying to be intentional this year about slowing down and remembering what Christmas is really all about. We have been opening a different Christmas book with the kids for the 12 days of Christmas and it's been a great activity with the kids - it allows us to slow down at least for a few moments each day and talk about the Christmas story with Dylan and Ella. We will be delivering some Christmas gifts to a needy family later this week as well with our small group, and we tried to involve the kids in picking out gifts from the Samaritan's Purse gift catalog (Dylan picked baby chicks, Ella picked dairy animals and Mady picked feed a hungry baby for a week :) )

What ways is your family celebrating Jesus this Christmas season?