Dance, Love, Wings and Always Dream: 2017

Christmas Eve.... Ely eating a Gingerbread man before bed. We tried making prime rib for the first time..... we are trying out all of these traditions and I'm not sure if that one is going to stick....maybe one for when they are teenagers? Only Sean and I seemed to be the ones that enjoyed dinner.

Trying to keep the tradition we started when we had Ely, they get to open two presents on Christmas Eve, a book and pj's. I wonder how long it will take them to realize it's the same thing every year on Christmas Eve.

Koa loves eating wrapping paper.

Christmas morning.... I'm actually really sad that our Christmas video we record when we open presents got wiped from Sean's phone today, so I'm going to be really extra with the journaling because I don't want to forget how sweet this morning was. Santa left Koa and Ely a note, Sean is reading it to everyone here.

Before we opened presents we had a family prayer, something I'm hoping stays a tradition in our family and that we have the gumption to stick to it. It's hard when they want to bust into their presents, but it helps put things into perspective and bring the spirit into our home.

Koa loved propping himself up on the presents. He is learning how to crawl right now so he was scooting all over the floor on Christmas morning and checking out all the presents.

Opening a helmet here...

"Hello Kitty! A helmet for a bike."--- She loves Hello Kitty..... I'm glad that Japan has people that tend to run on the smaller side.... all of the helmets at our BX were enormous on her. Santa made sure it was Japanese style and fit her properly.

She had to help Koa with all of his presents

Santa brought Koa a stuffed whale shark, an Okinawa baby staple.

Of course, Rocco is the most excited out of everyone to get his present.

a little bit of curl fluff in the photo

Shirt from Grandma Lily

Koa playing with his present

Rocco frolicking around the room with his new bone. Converse is our stubborn teenager and stayed in bed while we opened presents, but he received a gift as well.

Ely asked for a purple necklace from Santa, he brought her 2, one she could play with and a special one that is only worn for special occasions. Sean is putting the special one on here.

Best Buds

The picture Ely is touching is one of the gifts I gave Sean. It's a picture of Koa by the Koa wood guitar Sean bought when I was pregnant with Koa. Sean gave me a hard drive with all of the pictures he pulled from an old computer that crashed a while back.... it was special because all of those pictures were of Ely when she was a baby. Ely gave me popcorn (mommy's favorite...to share with Ely) and Koa gave me cookie cooling racks.

Grandma Janell gave her a purple dress.... and girl was on cloud nine!

Ely "Helping" Koa open his presents.

When I asked Ely over and over again what daddy would want, she said " A purple tie"--- we went to the store and she picked it out herself. Her purple dress and his purple tie match perfectly, completely unplanned.

Koa and Rocco are best friends, so they share everything, sometimes it's hard to explain to the both of them that they can't do that.

Ely was 2 months old when it was her first Christmas and didn't care too much about what was going on. It was fun having two children interested in their gifts, Koa played with every toy he received and adorably enjoyed each one of them.

We explained to her why Santa Clause brought her a helmet and told her mommy and daddy talked to him about a present that we wanted to give her. After all of the presents were opened and we were done, we pulled out her bike and her reaction was precious.

We found a purple bike that would fit her on Okinawa! It was an "out of stock" item...and I convinced them to give me the floor sample because.... all things purple!