Christmas Eve

Since our family is growing and getting more ambitious with the Christmas traditions, we've started a few of our own:

Like making far more sugar cookies than we could/should ever eat.  Thankfully, most of the cookies end up on the doorsteps of unsuspecting neighbors/friends.



One of my personal favorites is the Christmas dinner we've adopted:  King Crab legs, artichokes, and spinach pomegranate salad.  Not quite Old Bethlehem style, but, as you can see, no one's complaining.

We read the Nativity story, a book Nana made for us, and talk about the most important Christmas Gift of all--the life and Atonement of our Savior.

This year, we started a new tradition of giving "gifts" to Beckett.  We all came up with things we can do to be sure that we are able to have our family together for eternity.  We write them down and fill his stocking with our little notes.

We sure did miss our little Mr. B during the holidays.  The happiness of the wonderful season was a little more blunted by his absence from our home.  We are so glad, though, to know that, because of the birth, life, and Atonement of our loving Brother Jesus Christ, we can not only live with Beckett again, but can live in the presence of our Heavenly Father again.  We are so grateful for those blessings and our understanding of them. 
We also thought it was a good time to tell the kids that Mommy was pregnant and a new baby would be joining us in a few months.  The extra stocking is off to the right.  They were a little confused at first, but were super excited about a new sibling they could cuddle!