It's the most wonderful time of the year

This is a lengthy post. I figured I'd give one long post about the month of December. It's been a very busy month for us. It's hard to believe another year is coming to an end.

We brought out all the Christmas decorations the weekend after Thanksgiving. The girls had a lot of fun putting ornaments on the tree.

The gate helped keep all three girls away! Last year, we had about ten broken ornaments. So this year we just made the "hands off" rule. No broken ornaments this year!

We also couldn't put the presents under the tree. The girls started playing with them the first night we put them under there. I didn't want to have to rewrap everything so they wound up on the shelf.

This was our attempt at a Christmas card picture. It turned out fine but I never got around to sending those cards... Merry Christmas everyone!

Our friends hosted their annual Bunko party and this year they added an ugly sweater contest. Or course I went all out. Mike even joined in.

Yeah, I took the prize!

Christmas Eve we went to the 4 pm service at our church. Ava and Allie were in a childrens' choir. They were able to go on stage and sing Christmas carols. They had a lot of fun!

After the service we went to Jeff and Tara's house and celebrated Christmas with my side of the family.

Papa, Grandma, and all their grandchildren.

Christmas morning we woke up and read the Christmas story to the girls, sang happy birthday to Jesus, and had breakfast. My parents and Brian came over. Then we let the girls open their gifts.

Hannah enjoyed crawling around on the floor, getting into things.

The girls loved their princess barbies.

After lunch we headed over to the Epleys to celebrate with Mike's family.

Kathy had a great idea to give Ava and Allie a big fruit basket as a present. My girls LOVE fruit. They were eating out of this all day.

We had a wonderful Christmas. Our families were so generous and the girls were spoiled once again. Thank you so much!

Finally, we continued with our Italian Christmas tradition and made binulatha today! Mmmm, I love this stuff. The girls did a fantastic job helping.