Starting Our Christmas Traditions... Photos and Video!

For as long as I can remember, I have always loved Christmas. But since becoming a follower of Jesus, it has grown to mean so much more, as I have gained a greater understanding of how amazing it is that God Himself came to earth as a vulnerable baby, to show us His love, how we are to live, and most importantly, to reconcile us with God through His death and give us hope for eternity through His resurrection. That is why we love to celebrate Christmas; there really is no better news!

I have always wanted to have family Christmas traditions; special things that we do every year together as a family. For different reasons, I didn't have this growing up, but it is something I have always desired... Thankfully now, having Daniel, we feel that the time has come for us to start our own family traditions. So this year, as Christmas quickly approaches and with much excitement, we have started to implement some of the traditions that we hope to do for many years to come...

The first Christmas tradition that we started this past Saturday (the weekend after Thanksgiving), was to put up our Christmas tree and other decorations together as a family, with Christmas music playing in the background. It was such a joyful time, I almost cried at times! Daniel had a great time too, it all went very smoothly (which with a toddler, I wasn't sure it was going to be that way :-))!

Have a look at the slide show of photos, which record the very first time that Daniel helped us decorate our home for Christmas...

And here is a short video of our special morning... If you listen carefully, you will hear Daniel talking, including him saying his own name - he recently started calling himself "Nani", he says it so cutely and gently!

We hope to implement several other traditions this year, so stay tuned for more on this!