Merry Christmas, Part 1

We had a really fun Christmas in Phoenix. We started off by going to our church's Christmas Eve service...they had all of the kids come up from and sing "Jingle Bells," which was adorable. We followed that up with our traditional Christmas Eve dinner of French Dip. Rand was so excited he didn't fall asleep until 10:30pm.....

....and then he was up at 5am the next morning! Fortunately I was able to shoo him away for a bit to read in his room. After Ella woke up, we immediately opened stockings and then started making cinnamon rolls. After they were in the oven, we headed down for the Christmas tree! Werner lit a fire and we turned on Christmas music.

Rand and Ella had so much fun opening their presents. Because they didn't get gobs of presents we just took our time and let them play with things as they went along.

Then we went upstairs and had a deliciously unhealthy breakfast of eggs, sausage, and homemade cinnamon rolls with loads of frosting. We hosted an open house the rest of the afternoon and evening, and it was so fun having various friends stop by to chat, play games, and eat. It made for a really nice Christmas even without our family around!