christmas gift!

For all the Kirk-side of the family out there, is it too late to say this?! Probably so, but I'm attempting anyway. This is a phrase, along with "Christmas Eve gift" that are signature ways we ring in the holiday. The point is to be the first to say it to everyone in your family. It was so much fun when we were kids, especially when driving to join family in Tulsa for the holidays.

Our holiday this year has been good, though fraught with sickness (my mom, dad, me). I think we are all on the mend, however, for which we are grateful. Our time together has been spent lounging, driving, talking and watching movies, eating, and doing some exploring. Tomorrow morning we all drive north to OKC for a one-day Christmas event with mom's side of the family. We were supposed to go last Thursday, but mom was so sick and it didn't work out.

Here are a few snapshots that capture our time together:

Visiting with my oldest friend, Suzanne, and her hubby, Adam, and Suzanne's mom, Rita, at Starbucks on Christmas Eve

We went to see another set of old family friends, the Heritages/Leavers, yesterday for brunch. Here's a family shot of us by their tree.

Dawn and Drew's son, Ethan, is 2 months younger than Maggie. He is a total sweetheart and it was awesome to watch them play together. Maggie especially loved the refrigerator magnets.

Shannon took this shot and he wasn't even posing. Too cute!

Dawn was actually our favorite babysitter growing up, if you can believe that. She is only about 3 years older than I am now, but back then, that makes a big difference. It was fun to reconnect with her several years ago when we first moved to Dallas; we stayed with her and Drew at Dallas Theological Seminary, when we were scouting it out and I can remember both Dawn and I tripping out with how old we were.

The sweet Stutlers, in glowing pregnancy mode!

Getting ready for a walk with Grandpa on a COLD day

Reading before bed with Marmee

Opening presents; we officially did our Christmas on the 27th, due to everyone's sickness. Maggie seemed to enjoy the new things she got, but like most 1-year-olds, didn't really get all into it.

A favorite gift from Mema and Pops: a musical guitar! Aron was grinning from ear to ear when he opened it and Maggie was pretty stoked. here, dada is showing her the important chords.

Mags and mama

Ah, the joy of cheap gifts: I bought these plastic ice-cream sandwiches from the dollar bin at Target and Maggie played with them for a long time.

Maggie has thoroughly enjoyed our Fontanini nativity set. It's the same brand I had growing up and my mom bought this one because children can play with it without breaking anything. Maggie loves to put the heads of all the characters in her mouth and walk around. She loved doing that best with the baby Jesus and alas, he is no longer to be found. Hopefully, when we clean up from Christmas, we will find him somewhere nearby! :)

Listening and clapping while uncle Steve played the guitar.