Christmas Eve

We celebrated Christmas with Asa's mom Donna and his step-dad Lewis on Christmas Eve, as is our tradition. Bonnie was there with her sons, Malachi and Billy, as well as Asa's sisters Emily and Noah-Beth. I wish we had gotten it together to take a family picture of everyone, but it slipped my mind. So, here's us!
Marley actually ate a few things during our Christmas dinner and the kids had a great time playing together. I'm so glad that Marley is becoming more outgoing with other kids and adults. It is definitely a relief to not be the only one who can hold Marley all the time.

These cousins adore each other! I wish Billy and Malachi lived closer!
Marley loved opening presents and wanted to help everyone with theirs. Noah-Beth wanted to pass out all the presents to everyone before we all started opening them, but I was having the hardest time keeping Marley from touching them! I finally just gave up and she had to start. Just like with her first presents a few nights ago, she slowly pulled off small pieces at first and handed them to me. Once I started opening my own present and not paying so much attention to her tiny scraps of paper, she actually got the hang of it and tore them open.
And she was very proud of herself when she did! Asa's mother gave us an amazing book about a child whose father is in the Army and gets deployed for a year. She took the time to add in pictures of us and make it personal to Marley. It had Asa and I both tearing up in the middle of Christmas while everyone else opened their presents.

Another tradition is that we play Christmas themed Bingo together! We always play enough rounds for everyone to win at least once, and if you don't win you still get a prize! It was whole lot easier last year when we didn't have Marley trying to destroy everyone's cards... I mean help everyone play.
And last but not least was fireworks! Asa and I stopped on the way out at Asa's favorite fireworks stand and bought a family pack for everyone to enjoy. Unfortunately, this is like the coldest weather I can ever remember in Nacogdoches and we were about to freeze outside watching them. Lewis actually said he could see snow! So, the kids sat in our car and the adults took turns sitting in the car with the kids or standing outside freezing their butts off.
Marley had a blast figuring out how to turn on the windshield wipers and honk the horn!
I was actually proud of all the gifts we got for people this year. Before we have felt like we just had to get someone something so we picked whatever we could find. But this year I was so excited to give people things that we knew they would want and like. I was so excited to see their reactions to their gifts and it felt good to be able to show everyone that we were thinking about them. We are so fortunate to have as much as we do and it felt great to share that with our families this year. You could definitely feel the love in the house this Christmas.

Once Marley got to bed that night, the adults got everything ready for Santa to come. Emily made him cookies and Asa and I made sure the stocking were set out for him. We finished wrapping the presents from us and then went to bed so Santa could come!