Alethea's First Christmas

Alethea had her first Christmas this year.  So much fun!  I was a bit bummed out at first because I couldn’t find a first Christmas outfit anywhere that was in size twelve months.  I finally found a cute penguin outfit at Babies R Us that had an inkling of babies first Christmas written in the background so I got that one.  I think she looked super cute in it too and it will be one she can wear even after Christmas.

She isn't looking but you can see her cute little penguin shirt. :-)

Because Alethea is still so young and because we were traveling all over for the day, we didn’t really do much in the way of starting Christmas traditions with Alethea.  However, we did have a lot of fun brainstorming the things we want to incorporate in our Christmases of the future.  The most important thing about Christmas is most definitely making sure that the celebrations point toward Christ.  We have been discussing a lot whether we want to incorporate Santa into the celebrations and we are still not convinced of how to incorporate that tradition while still keeping the focus on Christ, but we haven’t ruled it out completely yet.  A few traditions we discussed that we want to incorporate are: read the Christmas story from the Bible, have a nativity (probably little people) that Alethea can play with/learn the story of Christ’s birth, give three gifts each Christmas to signify the gifts from the three wise men, advent calendar/wreath to count down days to Christmas, and make an effort give to something/someone outside our family (not sure what that will look like yet).  We might end up incorporating other things, but these were some of our brainstorms this year.

As I said, much of this didn’t happen this year because Alethea would not really understand it yet, and this is probably our last year celebrating Christmas however our parents have chosen to because we want to be at our own home for any future Christmases.  This year we were in Syracuse with Ben’s dad for Christmas Eve and Christmas morning.  We put all the presents under his dad’s Charlie Brown Christmas tree on Christmas Eve and Ben’s sister Rachel gave Alethea the sweetest cabbage patch baby dressed as a turtle before she headed to Rochester for the night.  Then when Alethea woke up on Christmas morning we opened presents.  She had a blast opening both her presents as well as ours.  We got her a Little People zoo train and her Grandpa got her Scout the puppy from Leap Frog.  She loved both of them!  Ben got me Glee Karaoke as well as Scottie McCreery’s debut album and I got him a new disc for disc golf as well as a gift card to Firehouse Subs.  This was the first time since we have been married that we actually got each other presents and it will definitely be a tradition we continue because it was a lot of fun surprising each other.  We also went over to Ben’s Grandma Dorothy’s and Alethea got some more loot there, clothes, books, a snail alphabet toy, a state quarter collection they had started for her, a few other fun goodies.

Sporting her Christmas dress for Christmas Eve 

With her cabbage patch doll on Christmas Eve

Snuggles with Mommy on Christmas Eve

Charlie Brown Tree

Investigating her presents

Digging in

  

Seeing what Daddy and Grandpa are up to

Christmas morning family photo

On her way to Rochester Christmas day

Then, because it was Alethea’s first Christmas, we went to Rochester to spend the afternoon with Ben’s mom and some of his extended family on that side.  We ate a yummy meal and then spent a while opening presents and fellowshipping together.  Alethea got some more loot here too, including some new BumGenius 4.0 cloth diapers, money toward college, some clothes, an awesome wooden puzzle that spells out her first and last name, a few ornaments, a Hal1mark story book about Christmas, and a cute stuffed bear.  Then we had saved her stocking for Rochester so his mom could see her open something from us and in it she got some more board books, a bath book, crayons, and yogurt melts. J 

Investigating her ornament

Bows are more yummy than food ;-)

Christmas night family photo

Christmas was a busy day that I really feel like we majorly missed celebrating the true reason for the season.  Several months before, Ben and I had already begun to discuss how we were thinking this would be our last Christmas going to celebrate with extended family on Christmas day so that we could focus on starting our own traditions.  To help simplify things and give us more time to focus on the true reason for the season, Christ, we will be trying to stay home for Christmas in the future.  Thankfully Alethea isn’t old enough yet to understand the story of Christ’s birth because if she was, I am disappointed in how little time Ben and I have spent making the focus of Christmas point toward His birth.  I think it partly took having Alethea, and reflecting on how we want to teach her about Christ's birth, in order to see the fault in how Ben and I have celebrated past Christmases even as a family of two.  Next year will be different, and I am excited to teach Alethea the joy and the true reason for all the gifts and celebrating on Christmas!

Now I don’t want to end on a downer note, but I just had to reflect on what I have learned from our first Christmas as a family of three.  We had a lot of fun seeing family and enjoying the blessings that they are in our lives.  God is good and we were truly blessed this Christmas with much more than we could have ever expected.