Recovering from Christmas!

I hope your Christmas was as good as ours.

I don't mean the "stuff" that we got. I just mean the sheer joy of being together. It truly seems like Christmas just gets better and better each year. The pictures here are a couple of my favorite: Lily with her daddy and Ann Catherine making a gingerbread house. (On a side note, have you ever tried to put one of those together? It is crazy!! Chris and I were about to pull our hair out! And then about a minute after we finished it, it collapsed. Needless to say, next year we'll make the gingerbread cookies and not the house!)

This was the first year that Ann Catherine got into Christmas. She loved opening presents! As soon as she opened one, she would say, "Mommy, I want a-nudder one." Lily, on the other hand, didn't have a clue what was going on, but had fun anyway.

I was thinking the other day about my favorite part of this Christmas, and I realized that it didn't have anything to do with any gifts. Chris and I really worked this year to teach Ann Catherine what Christmas was really about. We told her that it was the day Jesus was born. She understood that because not only did we talk about it at home, but her daycare teachers reinforced it - not to mention her Wiggles Christmas DVD which has a song about "Mother Mary, Father Joseph" that she absolutely loves!

A couple of days before Christmas, I told her that Christmas was Jesus' birthday and just as we sang "Happy Birthday" to Lily at her party, we could also sing it to Jesus on Christmas. This really resonated with her because she loved singing to Lily the week of her birthday.

On Christmas Eve, we went to church. We got there early to get a good seat and the nursery wasn't open yet, so we took them into the sanctuary to wait. There were unlit candles on our seats for the service. Ann Catherine grabbed one, went to the steps and out of the blue starting singing the "Happy Birthday" song to Jesus. Then when she finished, she said "Happy Birthday, Jesus!"

I looked at Chris with tears in my eyes and smiled. She got it, I thought! I believe with all my heart that you have to start teaching your kids what you believe when they are young. Chris and I are trying to do that. But sometimes you wonder, do they really understand what I'm telling them?

I got my answer on Christmas Eve.