Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas from the Obreiters! We enjoyed our very first Christmas morning in our own home today. Last night we went with friends to a Christmas Eve church service at their church (ours didn't have one). The girls were pretty good, but I think our pew won the noisiest pew award. Then we came home and watched the new Veggie Tales movie - it's a meaningful life - and the winnie the pooh Christmas special. Abby is finally getting holidays, so she was really excited about Christmas and was so excited she couldn't get to sleep last night. She ended up in our bed since Steve and I were sleeping way, way before she was. And, since she was the night owl, Olivia decided to be the early bird. She got me up and out of bed at 6 a.m. I waited until 8 a.m. until I woke Abby and Steve up to get the Christmas party started.

We've been trying hard to make some meaningful traditions for our family, so we started the morning with the Christmas story from Abby's children's illustrated Bible. Then we let the girls open up their stockings. After that we had breakfast since Abby had quite a few new toys she really couldn't wait to play with. After we got everyone fed it took about an hour to get the presents opened - we had major delays between each present so that the gift could be taken out, played with, and then introduced to its new friends. Olivia, unlike Abby, was way into the unwrapping of the gifts. She even had some that she grabbed on her own and had unwrapped without us even knowing that she had gotten into them. Abby got a real talking Jessie doll that is almost the same as her real talking Woody doll from Grandma Mary and Grandpa Scott (she is way, way, way into toy story right now). Olivia got a doll of her very own and some little people, which she likes to play with. And we got two board games that are toddler friendly that "santa" gave to Steve, so Abby and her daddy have been playing some board games today. We only had one minor mishap - I was uncapping a window crayon for Abby and pulling really hard to get the lid off. The cap came off unexpectedly and I popped Abby right in the nose. So my poor little girl got her first bloody nose on Christmas day caused by me.

And we had "duck" for dinner. Yesterday Steve told Abby that we were all going to pick part of the Christmas dinner. I asked her what she wanted to eat and out of the blue she said duck. There was only one duck at the grocery store, and it was way more meat than we needed for the 3 of us, so we bought cornish hens instead and had baby "duck" for dinner. Abby must have been impressed because she ate a ton of it.

Enjoy your holiday season! And don't forget to reflect upon the birth and death of our savior, Jesus Christ.