Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas, friends!

The Morales home this Christmas was full of treasures both great and small.  We finished our shopping really early this year, around Dec 6!  We had saved and set aside $35.00 for gifts for each other - which went surprisingly farther than either of us expected!  We could hardly contain ourselves on Christmas Eve and agreed to open presents at midnight. 

Christmas day we enjoyed a lazy morning.  Maurice cozied himself up in the fluffy new bathrobe and warm slippers I got him and we shared a chair as we read and attempted our hand at sight-reading some old songs from the antique hymn book that he got me! We each ate some of the German fruit cake that he got me and indulged in some yummy hot chocolate in my new mugs while listening to a new Half-Handed Cloud cd - all gifts from Maurice to me (pictured above)!

Around two o'clock, we drove down to have Christmas dinner with our friend Amy's family.  We had the pleasure of meeting them at her intimate wedding we wrote about last month and they invited us over to celebrate Christmas with them!  They live about an hour south of us in Tacoma.  We had a great time with them and the rest of the family we met.  Favorite moment?  Playing video games with their youngest daughter, Sophie.  We ran out of enough controllers for everyone to play this war game, so we invented weapons of our own so everyone could still participate.  Sophie would yell out "Down!" when the enemies would throw bombs our way and we would all fall from our knees to our faces on the ground.  

Amy's dad and step-mom were such gracious and generous hosts.  So much yummy food and great company!  It was a treat for us to get to spend time with a family when we couldn't get all the way back home to be with our own on our first Christmas out on our own.

When we got home, we attempted our hand at recording "Angels we have heard on High" on garage band.  Who knows... could be next year's Christmas gift for everyone! 

We hope your Christmas day was even more delightful than ours! May Jesus show Himself to you and humble you in this special season. 

Merry Christmas, everyone!