I recently told someone that once they have children Christmas will become magical again. I firmly believe that having children makes everything more magical, but this year was one of the most magical holiday seasons of all. Bronson was sooo into pretending to be an elf and enjoying all the Christmas stories that we talked about. He also had some very deep questions to ask me about Christmas being Jesus' birthday and why we receive gifts if it is not our birthday. I think that these questions come because of his birthday's close proximity to Christmas. The cutest thing that he came up with on his own is that Jesus doesn't ask for presents because all He wants is to love us. He then began to sing, "Jesus loves me." I love my little boy and his desire to know all about Jesus and how come God can see us all the time. He definitely has a funny side, but his desire to love God is amazing.
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| John, Kyle and their boys |
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| Santa and his elves |
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| Santa |
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| Auntie Lex and Oaklen |
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| Two miracles of 2011 |
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| Deets Family Christmas Eve 2011 |
Christmas this year was VERY busy! My sister Ashley's husband bought their first home right before Christmas so we had the anticipation of going over the mountain (to Redmond) after our holiday festivities. We spent the night before Christmas Eve at Kyle's parents and then woke up the morning of Christmas Eve and went to visit the Mortenson's out in Kings Valley. After our quick visit with John and Heather and their boys we went to my sister Alexis's house and enjoyed wonderful food and gifts with my sisters and mom. It was lots of fun and we enjoyed dressing up baby Oaklen and laughing at his giant belly in his Santa suit.
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| Nana and her family |
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| Grandpa George and his boys |
We then left my sister's house and headed out to Scio to my Aunt Teresa's house to celebrate Christmas with my Dad's side of the family. This was my Dad's first Christmas home and it was so exciting to see how much his two grandsons love their Grandpa George. I am so thankful for all of the prayers for our relationship with Dad. He is doing so great and I know without a doubt that he is going to leave a legacy of his love for God to his family.
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| Elf Boy |
We then left Aunt Teresa's house and drove back to Dallas so that Bronson could sleep in his own bed for Christmas. This was the first year that we experienced the excitement of Santa and Bronson had a hard time getting to sleep. He kept "hearing bells" and looking out the window to see if Santa was flying by. Prior to Christmas Eve night he had been wearing his elf ears and hat and dreaming about visiting the North Pole in his hand-made plane with a Corvette engine. Kyle had been reading him a book from when he was little and the story must have made it to his dreams.
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| Christmas on Bronson's patio |
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| Cleaning guns with the guys |
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| Table before the olive incident |
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| Cutie Pie |
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| Deets Family Christmas Day 2011 |
Bronson woke up around 7am on Christmas morning and came down the stairs to find that Santa had visited and left him a work bench and leaf blower. He is so sweet and took a quick break to go and get his BBQ that Auntie Lex had gotten him so that he could set up his patio and fix us a Christmas steak. I love the fact that I sleep the last few hours of the morning on the couch so that I can capture these expressions on my video camera. He is so adorable!
We took our time opening gifts with our family and then headed down to Kyle's parents. This year the majority of the gifts were for Bronson because Kyle and I were both spoiled by his parents prior to Christmas when they purchased us a sleep number bed. We had a great time with Kyle's parents and Uncle Chris. Ann made us an amazing dinner that was briefly interrupted by a choking incident and projectile vomiting all in front of the Christmas dinner by Bronson. As we later said it will be a dinner that we will never forget. The guys had lots of fun catching up and cleaning guns. It was a great quiet Christmas! It seems that with children each year of Christmas just gets better. The only thing that would have made this Christmas perfect is if we were able to attend church, but once again our little guy was a little under the weather on Christmas so we had to stay home. I will never forget Christmas 2011 as the year of firsts for many things!
