Christmas Recap!

We had a great Christmas celebrating with my family this year. Josh's mom went to Tulsa to spend Christmas with his sister, so we headed to Ohio for the weekend. Two of my three brothers were there. We missed Ben and Sarah and the kids, but loved getting some time with Dan and Lauren and Dave. The recent excitement around our house has been that my cousin, Megan, and her little boy, Hunter, have moved in with us for a while. So we loved getting to spend Christmas with Megan and Hunter and including them in on our family traditions and chaos! Christmas with my family is always filled with amazing food, chaos, constant laughter, and pajamas. It is a Newman tradition to get jammie gifts on Christmas Eve and we pretty much don't take them off until the holiday is over. They are removed only for hot-tubbing, showers, and to be washed quickly so that they can be worn again immediately. Anybody not wearing pjs will probably be ridiculed. We rarely do traditional holiday food. The highlight of this Christmas was the steak and crab legs for dinner. yum! We also loved the hot wings and fresh, smoked salmon that my aunt brought to us from Alaska.

On Christmas Eve, we put candles in cupcakes and sang Happy Birthday to Jesus and talked about what Christmas is really all about. The kids had fun tracking Santa on norad before they went to bed and then everybody got up Christmas morning for gifts. Seth got some major additions to his Geotrax and Lilah got the American Girl bitty baby. She LOVES it! The big theme this year for the kids was Toy Story. Santa brought each kid a Toy Story character and they now have nearly a complete set so that they can all play with them together. Seth also got a remote controlled helicopter that he loves. The trick will be to see if he ever gets in pried out of his daddy's hands long enough to actually play with it! Josh has become kind of obsessed. The grown-up boys had so much fun playing with it that Dan and Dave finally went out and bought their own. Then they had three to compete with each other. The planes fly precariously and shoot missiles, so it felt like being in a miniature war zone the whole weekend. Each child got smacked in the face at least once by whirring helicopter wings. The other big theme for Christmas gifts was Glee. I'm not gonna lie. I love Glee. So Santa brought me 4 Glee cds and the new Glee Karaoke Revolution for Wii. I got to pretend I was Lea Michelle all weekend. (I'm sure nobody got sick of that). =)

The other special event on Christmas day was that Uncle Dan performed Isaac's baby dedication ceremony. While we have attended church ever since Isaac was born, we have not been really connected in a church and the churches we have gone to have been huge so we didn't really know anybody. Consequently, we never had Isaac dedicated to the Lord in one of the churches because it did not feel very intimate. My brother, Daniel, just finished his degree in theology from Regent University. So, we asked if he would do the honor of dedicating Isaac to God in front of our family on Christmas day. Josh's mom and sister skyped in to watch the dedication and we videotaped it for the rest of the family who could not be there. It was very special having Uncle Dan commit our son to the Lord and bestowing the mantle of responsibility on me and Josh to raise Isaac according to God's word and for His purposes. It was a special Christmas and we loved getting to celebrate the birth of our Savior with those that we love. Now on to the New Year!