Merry Christmas!

As you can imagine this Christmas was a bit extra cool as it was our first Christmas with Kayleigh and Michael on board as part of our family.  We did things a bit different this year as our family down in Corpus Christi rented a house on the beach and invited us down for the holiday.  This did alleviate our marriage long debate of whether you open presents on Christmas Eve (Jodi's wrong way...) or Christmas morning (Chris' correct way.... ).  We did open a few before we left and made our way down to the beach.

The house on the beach was really nice and a quick 2 minute walk to the sand and surf.  I have always been a huge fan of the beach and would live there in a hearbeat (not to mention I would look awesome in one of those grass skirt thingies....).  It was great to get away and relax for a couple days, enjoy the swooshing of the surf on the beach.  Christmas day was nice and sunny, shorts and tshirt playing on the beach (and my requisite sunburn of course...).  We had a very tasty family breakfast and a very large game of white elephant gift exchange with all of the family, our aunt & uncle, cousins and more cousins!

The day after Christmas a cold front came in so I took a few of the kids to go fishing as they really wanted to go (K & M are fishing fanatics...), but it was very cold and the fish weren't biting, so another time!  Upon our return home we finished exchanging and opening gifts and had some great family time together.  We kept the gift giving to a reasonable amount financially and gave each child a budget (Bekah has a job so she ran more on her own budget there....).  The kids made a wonderful game and made their portion go an extra long way. 

So often people hear the negative post-adoption stories of adopted kids who act out, or are selfish and think only of themselves, having come from a self-preservation environment (really can they be blamed for it.....).  Our story continues to amaze us with how great K & M have done in the 7 months they've been here.  They are both very giving actually, and really made a point of wanting to do for others this year.  At the white elephant exchange, Michael ended up with a snazzy popcorn popper that my cousin really was shooting for.  The next morning, totally on his own, he gave it to her as a gift.  It was really sweet of him!  At our exchange, both he and Kayleigh would get excited when one of us would open their gift (I got awesome Star Wars pajama pants :)

In these 7 months we've been able to see that not only has God watched over them in their transition to a new family and life, but that He was watching over them long before they became ours.  We truly love our 5 kids and can't imagine life any other way.