Christmas has come and gone

Well, we have survived another Christmas season. At least, from the gift standpoint. Isn't it amazing thought that we put so much time, effort and concern into the Christmas Season that we have to "survive"? I mean, after all, that is not the real reason for the season. We spent Christmas Eve at home with just the four of us, and that was real special. We read the Christmas Story from Jackson's special Bible, sang Happy Birthday to Jesus, and then of course, tore open the wrapping paper to reveal all the "goods".

Here is a picture of Jody and the kids getting into the fun. As you can see, both boys are very interested in what is happening. The boys got their very own nativity set from grandpa and grandma, and now Mommy is explaining who the different people are and their significance in the whole realm of things. JT and Jefferson both thought it was very cool, although for completely different reasons. It is also a little finger puppet set, so JT was able to act out the different individuals, and the finger puppets are soft, so Jefferson was able to chew on them (something he does to many, many things). It was definitely a great gift to give them, because it helped JT to understand a little better about Jesus' birth.

Here is another picture of the boys, just because I think it is cute. Mommy took this one of the boys for me. I bought the boys the t-shirts and footballs from the ESPNZone restaurant during my last business trip to New York City in August of 2005. There are two ironic things about this picture: 1) we no longer have cable tv, so we can't even watch ESPN, and 2) anyone that knows the boys knows that they don't sit still long enough to watch tv. There are very few things that you can get them to sit long enough for when it comes to the tv. They are both very "busy", which is just fine with us.

On Christmas Day we celebrate Christmas with Jody's parents. Also, her brother Alan's birthday is December 25, so we celebrate that too. He flew back from Kentucky for the week, so the boys got to do all sorts of fun things with him. Here is a picture of the boys with their grandparents. This year the boys got a very cool gift - their very own first sled: as you can see from the picture (if you click on it) that JT absolutely LOVES the sled. Jefferson wasn't quite so sure, but give him time and he will want to be doing whatever JT is doing, just like everything else. Here is JT on one of his first "solo" rides:

Finally, we celebrated Alan's birthday in the evening. By that time, after all the excitement, playing outside in the nice weather and everything else, some people just couldn't keep up anymore: