Christmas at the Lanier's!

First of all, we want to wish all of our friends and family a wonderful Christmas and may your New Year be filled with love, peace and joy.  This Christmas season, were have been so thankful and so blessed. It has been a rough few months adjusting to our new home, our new community, Nick's new job, and him going away a lot.  We have had a lot of stress in our lives in one form or another in this last bit of time, but we looked very forward to our first Christmas in our new home.  

This year we had to cut back a bit on Christmas.  We've been in our home for about 5 and a half months now, and it has been a bit different for us financially.  For the last 8 years, we've lived in military housing on an Army post and while we've paid for housing via our BAH, we have not had to pay for utilities.  Now we have electric/water/sewer, etc. in addition to our mortgage.  We are still getting used to the extra bills as they fluctuate quite a bit, especially the electric, with the seasons.  The girls have been reading the Little House series of books and we talked about what it was like in those times, that they did not go to Walmart, or Target or to the Mall to purchase gifts for each other.  The girls surprised me, suddenly, no more attention was spent on the latest toy and electronic commercials on the television, and instead they were focused on brainstorming gift ideas of things they could make for our family members.  We had set aside a little to be able to get them each a small santa gift, and the rest we were making by hand. They knew it would be a small Christmas, but they were okay with that, focused not on gifts they wanted, but on gifts they could invest their time and heart in to give.

Well, we were surprised by a couple of angels/santas that sent some wonderful surprise packages of gifts for the girls.  My "thank you's" just didn't seem to be enough words to express the gratitude that I had for these kind and generous folks.  All I can say is we have been truly blessed.  My girls came out wide-eyed on Christmas morning to more than they had dreamed of, and the wonder in their eyes was fabulous.  Sophia said, "Wow!  I really wasn't expecting this much!"  Juliette said, "Wow! We must have been REALLY good this year!" and Hannah just stood by with amazement on her face, see she knows about Santa now and thought she knew exactly what would be under our tree.  Evy just got very excited and yelled, "Pesents!!  Santa Clock bing me pesents!"  It was such a wonderful gift to our family, and those of you know who you are and I thank you truly from the bottom of my heart.  Between friends and family, this Christmas was truly one of the best ever, material things aside.  We are looking forward to being in the position of paying it forward in the future.

Below I have just posted some of the photos sharing our day.  Thank you for allowing me to share the wonders of this day with you!

Cookie making on Christmas Eve:

Christmas morning

Evy seeing her Rose Petal Cottage for the first time:

The girls and some of their presents:

Evy in her house and in front of the tree:

Sophia by the tree:

And Juliette ready for bed in the night gown I made her:

I didn't get any of Hannah in front of the tree because she spent most of the day with her nose in a book she had been wanting. 

Thank you so much for sharing our day!  Hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas and may you have a Happy New Year!