New Christmas Traditions

Like posted earlier, this was the first year we really started with our family Christmas traditions. Of course, we taught her lots about baby Jesus, Mary, Joseph and the manger, the real reason we celebrate this holiday. She can look at nativities and name off the major people and tell you about baby Jesus sleeping in the manger.

Our Chirstmas started a week early when Grandma and Grandpa Salt came down from Montana. We got to visit with them for a long weekend, and had a gift session then. Paige got an art easel, complete with paints, markers, and chalk. It's difficult to keep her away from it. She is really into drawing and trying to write letters and names. It's gonna be a great thing to teach her letters and words on as she grows.

We also started teaching Paige about Santa Claus. On Christmas Eve, we went to the Candlelight service at our church. Then we came home and made cookies just for Santa. It was fun having her on the counter with me, punching out shapes and decorating the cookies. After the cookies, we headed over to Richard and Terri Heckman's house for their traditional M&M hot chocolate. Yummy!

Christmas morning, Paige woke up to find all her cookies gone, and new presents under the tree. We have never seen her dance around and get so excited about presents before. But she knew that Santa came and visited her house. She loved everything he brought, especially her new baby!We spent Christmas day out at Nanna and Nanno's house. She had tons of fun playing with her cousins, Hannah, Dominic, and Brooklyn. Nanna got a new play kitchen at her house, so the girls played for hours out there, cooking and serving dinner.

The day after Christmas we went down to Pappa and Grandma's house in Bakersfield. More presents were opened there (see her pretty Princess Paige outfit in the previous post). That evening we went out to CALM (CAlifornia Living Museum), a small zoo, where they put up tons of lights. It was beautiful! It was fun to take Paige out there to see the figures. She seemed to enjoy finding them and naming all the ones she could. She especially enjoyed the animated ones!
You can imagine that after all these festivities, we were exhausted! Christmas is tons of fun, especially when seen through the innocence of a little girl.