Before the actual day of Christmas though....
We went to McCormick train park in Scottsdale a few days before to let Ruby ride the train. She loves cars and trains right now so we thought she'd love it! The line was over two hours long though, so we went and rode the smaller volunteer train. She was stone faced the whole time but I think she really liked it.
On Christmas Eve we had our traditional party with my mom's side of the family. This year felt different though because it is the first Christmas without Papa. He's always been such a big part of our Christmas Eve traditions and loved to watch all his grandkids open presents. So this year, before going over Grammy's house for dinner and presents, we went and visited Papa. It was really special and I'm sure will become a tradition.
Ruby loved participating in the Secret Santa gift exchange between all the cousins. Technically they're all my first cousins, but ever since we older girls got married we got kicked out of the cousin exchange and now do the White Elephant exchange with the adults. So now our kids take our places!
Christmas Day was great. Since we had church at 2 we did all our present opening with the girls before we had to get ready for church. Christmas this year was simple, and small, but perfect.
Ruby loved opening her presents, even the clothes which I thought she would find boring. It's a good thing too because that's mostly what she got!
Bowling with daddy down the hallway
Then Sophie woke up and we opened presents with her.
Can you tell what our favorite gift was this year?
After church we went over to my parents house, where we got a big surprise and the girls opened their gifts from grandma and grandpa.
In hindsight, I don't know why I fretted so much about Christmas. I was so worried about what to get the girls and the fact that we couldn't get them much this year, or much for each other, but it ended up being a perfect day spent with family, laughs, tears, and a whole lot of love.
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