Keeping Up With The Clarks: Christmas Time!

~WARNING ~

This is going to be a long post with lots of pictures!

I just love Christmas time, but this year we didn't do a good job at decorating at all... having a baby makes everything just that much more complicated (but 100x better!). We didn't put lights up outside, and honestly, we're lucky we had a Christmas tree up at all. We said this is the last year for a real tree. I think you forget how much work and how big of a mess they are until you get one. So yeah, probably no real tree next year.

We just had a blast with Abigail! Of course she didn't help unwrap her gifts or anything like that (she's only two months old!) but she smiled and laughed, and everyone had so much fun with her.

We went to Mercer the weekend before Christmas where Abby met some of her extended family and we had Christmas with Jordan's family. She got lots of gifts and got to spend time with her cousin Mason (who is so cute and so much fun, also). We ate some really great food and had a wonderful time!

Abigail with great-grandma Mitchell
Uncle Jordan and Mason

Aunt Megan and Uncle Zach

Jordan and I started a family tradition... on Christmas eve we get Christmas PJ's and wear them to bed, wake up to open presents with them on the next morning, and take a picture in front of the fireplace with 'em on. We figured that no matter where we move we'll always have a fireplace, so this should be a tradition we can easily make happen each year. I was a little stressed out shopping for Christmas PJ's this year, though. I didn't "think" of the idea until Christmas eve and by that point Target was pretty picked over. Jordan got us a video camera, which I'm really excited about. Now we'll just see how often we take videos and what we do with them!!

Later Christmas day we traveled to Nebraska and had Christmas with my mom, dad and sister Christmas night. Again, Abigail got spoiled and got a lot of fun gifts, including a Cabbage Patch doll, some John Deer clothes and Aunt Allison made her the neatest thing for her wall (I'm going to have to take a picture). Grandpa has some majic tricks up his sleeve ~ if Abigail cried all he had to do was sing her "Camp Town Races" and poof! she was better. It seemed to only work for him, though, Jordan and I tried it and we don't have the majic touch. The rest of the weekend was filled with family, food and fun. We really had a great time.