christmas eve

on christmas eve we went to church together as a family, which is a tradition that is very important to me. i cherish that time of singing christmas songs and reflecting on the true meaning of christmas and it helps me remember to put things in perspective as the craziness of christmas begins. this year, we attended the christmas eve service for the first time as a family of four!

after church, we drove to arlington to spend the evening with john's family. it was a special time because phuong, brian, and michael were here from pennsylvania and bill and ak were here from london. it has been a long time since we've all been together!

this first picture is actually from a few days before christmas eve. our big present for quinn was this car/truck table. john worked really hard designing and painting roads, parking lots, and even a river on an old ikea coffee table we had. he picked out hot wheels cars for quinn to drive on the table and even installed a drawer under the table to store the cars and trucks. here he is, hard at work! you can see the finished product on the next blog post.

here are my sweet babies in their christmas eve outfits

opening a present from london with uncle bill

besancon girls

besancon boys

grammy had sticker books and a christmas story to read with michael and quinn...

while caroline just enjoyed snuggling with me on the couch :)

stay tuned for more blog posts from the past week...i have at least 4 written in my head, so we'll see when they actually turn into real posts :)