Christmas 2016 : Photos

     It's the most wonderful time of the year! (= I love Christmas time. So many great traditions, so much time spent with loved ones and most important, we celebrate the birth of our Savior, Jesus Christ. 

     I apologize in advance for the quality of some of the photos. Children don't sit still for photos, and the lighting happened to be horrible at times, and as I'm not the best photographer, some photos didn't turn out the best. None the less, we had a great time celebrating Christmas this year and I wanted to share some photo (= 

P.s. This is a summery of "Christmas themed" photos from the whole month of December. 

Enjoy (=

This photo is from the first of December. I did a book advent countdown and also added their Christmas pj's to the very first day, so that they could wear them all throughout December. 

All ready for a white elephant game 

Growing up in Russia, we hardly every had candy. But on Christmas eve, the church we attended always had bags of candy for all the children. The Russian churches here in America have kept the traditions. This Christmas eve we visited my parents church (which is Russian) and all 3 of my kiddos got a bag of candy each. Since Zeke is too young for candy, I gave that bag away to someone else. Gabriel and Noelani were so excited for their bags though (= 

Snowflake photobomb hahaha

We got a few inches of snow over night and had a white Christmas morning. 

After Christmas church service, we headed to Grandma's (my mom's) house for some family, food and gift exchange. 

Standard Russian no smile pose hahaha 

My parents and the yummy food. My mom has always strived to make our Christmases so special. From the amazing food, to the presents she gets everyone. Now that I'm a mother myself, I realize just how hard it is to make holidays special, yet how rewarding it is to see the smiles on your children's faces. 

David and I decided to open presents on New Years this year. But since grandma got everyone a gift, we opened her gifts after Christmas brunch. 

I think my children enjoyed tearing open the gifts almost more then the item wrapped hahaha 

I love all 3 of my children equally. But there is something so special about my bond with my daughter. And perhaps its because she is my only daughter. Perhaps its because I know that being the same gender, we will have so much similarities and things in common. 

Rocking out hahaha 

Our other musician 

One thing I've always found attractive in David was how he got along so well with children. Not a lot of grown men will get down on a kids level and play games with them (= 

On the 20th of December was my dad's birthday. We weren't able to really celebrate it, so we had him blow out candles on Christmas 

Gabriel has been loving blowing out candles. He was pretty upset when he realized grandpa got to blow them out instead of him. But he was back to his happy self when we had all the children blow out candles in honor of Jesus' birthday. 

I hope you guys had a wonderful Christmas and happy Holidays.