Merry Christmas 2011

Merry Christmas Everyone!

The Clark family had an amazing holiday.  This was the first time we had Christmas with my family in 4 years - I was pregnant with Hannah when we were all in Arizona together.  Now with everyone back in Iowa, we had a great time together!

Here we are at church on Christmas Eve.

 After church we all opened a couple of gifts. 

Hannah and Mia got matching Mickey Mouse shirts

 Hannah was extremely excited about her new vtech camera - no more borrowing mommy's! - from her Mama and Papa.  She has already taken so many pictures of everything. 

 Mia fell in love with her new flashlight. 

 Christmas Eve was also the night we said good-bye to Briley and Joy - until next year.  Hopefully they will make an appearance or two before the holidays.

 Christmas morning starting out amazing - the girls both slept in!! But as soon as Hannah noticed she had a surprise in her stocking - she asked me if she could open her bookmarks. She knew Santa wouldn't let her down and he brought her lots and lots of bookmarks!

 Mia had changed her mind about wanting a Christmas tree from Santa and started asking for a Mickey Mouse - I guess he already knew and she got a Mickey Mouse pillow pet.

 We were back at church after opening stocking gifts for time of fellowship, cinnamon rolls, and a lovely service!  It doesn't seem like Christmas falls on a Sunday very often and I loved being in church on Christmas morning.

 After church we were back at my parent's home and the girls were ready to open more gifts before lunch.   My family is pretty big and every year we have a Secret Santa gift exchange. It is always a good time - and very funny when Mia opened a monkey hat! (We all call her Monkey Mia and she always replies, "I not a monkey.")

 Then the girls were finally able to open the rest of their gifts

 And I got VERY EXCITED when I opened THIS:

 A Soda Stream Soda Maker!! EEk! Now I can make my own soda pop - everyone has had a lot of fun trying to figure it out and make 'perfect' drinks.

And because we had no snow this Christmas and it was a beautiful day, we all went to the park. Of course the girls had a blast...

 So did Bella. :)

As much as I would have loved some snow, Christmas was still amazing!  Spending time with my amazing family, eating delicious food, playing together at the park, and trying out our new gifts - it was a fantastic day to celebrate the birth of Jesus.