Christmas 2021 - Part 2
We celebrated our Christmas at our house on Christmas Day. It was a nice, low-key day at home that included opening gifts, a big breakfast (with cinnamon rolls, the highlight of the meal) and watching Charlie Brown’s Christmas. I did start the day out with an attempt at some portraits in front of the tree in their Christmas pj’s…as you can see, Zoe was not a fan of this plan.
I love that the girls are both old enough now to pick out what they want to give each other for Christmas. Ava was so excited to get Zoe the JJ doll, from Cocomelon. Zoe picked out a book for Ava through the Scholastic book club at her school but we knew it wouldn’t arrive in time. So, I took her to Target to pick out a small gift for Ava to be able to open. After much searching, she picked a BFF necklace and some hair ties for Ava.
As usual, we did our 3 categories of gifts plus something for them to give. This year, they actually ended up giving multiple gifts. We made our Operation Christmas Child shoeboxes as usual. Zoe’s dance studio also collected gift cards for the Greenville Foster Parent Association and we let the girls each pick out a gift card to give. Then I got an email from a friend who is a missionary in India. She said that she and some friends there were working to create shoeboxes for the slum kids. Because India is a closed country, OCC can’t deliver shoeboxes as a Christian organization. So, these ladies wanted to do something for the slum kids for Christmas. We had each of our girls donate the suggested amount to create a box. The report from my friend was that they over-budgeted what it would cost to create a box for the kids and were able to actually give them blankets and a meal on top of the fun backpack/box! We love teaching our girls that Christmas is not just about getting presents and that there are many people around the world that are much less fortunate than they are. We hope that these little gestures will help them as they grow up to care for the less fortunate.
For the girls’ first gift from us, we did something they needed. Ava needed larger ice skates and was so excited to get new ones. Unfortunately, her foot is growing so fast the new ones were too small so we had to order a different pair. Zoe was super excited about her new lunch box, thermos and bento box. She loves staying late on Fridays at school and eating her lunch there. She’s been using an old lunch bag of mine so now she has her own like a big girl.
As always, both girls got a few books featuring brown skinned characters as their something to read gift.
Their final gift was something they wanted. Ava had been asking for Disney Princess barbie style dolls and was so happy to get them. Zoe is our little architect/engineer so we got her a Princess lego set. We never ventured into legos with Ava but Zoe is in love with them!
Both girls loved searching their stockings for the little surprises in them. One of the favorites was a craft box that DJ and I found at the Indie Craft Parade Pop Up Shop. They are from Re-Craft Greenville that uses all recycled items to create crafts. They were old cigar boxes that included stamps, maps, random magazine pages and mod podge that you could use to decorate the box any way you want. The girls loved putting them together and it was a fun Christmas weekend craft.
We had a really nice Christmas day as a family. These 2 girls didn’t get a gift this year (sorry pups) but they loved being with us and both looked so cute in front of the tree that I had to get their pictures too (Kate was hiding somewhere as usual).
