Christmas as a family of three

Christmas this year was very special for our family - it was our first time celebrating with Carter! We have been looking forward to sharing Christmas with our children for years and it was so wonderful for it to finally happen. And if that wasn’t enough we were also privileged to have my Aunt Pat and Uncle Tim come and visit us from Santa Barbara to celebrate the holiday! They are like a second set of parents to me and a third set of grandparents for Carter and we were honored to have them here!

Pat and Tim arrived on Christmas Eve. We went to church for the Christmas Eve service and then headed out to P.F. Chang’s for a yummy dinner. Carter did well at the restaurant and even enjoyed some cuddle time with Aunt Pat after dinner.

Before bedtime Carter set out some egg nog and cookies and wrote a letter to Santa… well, I wrote the letter but I’m sure it was what Carter would have written, if he could write.

After what felt to be a short night we woke up to find that indeed Santa visited our house!

We caught Carter’s trip from his bedroom to the living room on video (a long-standing family tradition on my side of the family). Checking out the shoes seemed to be more exciting initially, but I’m sure that was because he didn’t know what was in store for him in the living room…

Then the fun began as we showed Carter how to check out all of the loot from Santa in and below his stocking (that my mom, aka Grammy, made for him)!

After this we headed into the family room where our Christmas tree was to open gifts under the tree from family and friends. The tree was certainly packed for only having five people’s gifts under it. What a blessing!

It was really fun teaching the little guy how to open presents and he caught on pretty fast! He’ll be a gift-opening pro in no time!

After opening the gifts under the tree we ate brunch, hung out, did some video calls to family, made dinner, ate dinner, and hung out some more - a pretty wonderful way to spend the day if I do say so myself!

We had a wonderful first Christmas as a family of three and we’re so glad we got to share it with Aunt Pat and Uncle Tim! We hope your holiday was wonderful, too! Merry Christmas!