Christmas...Three

Scott's mom is the head of her church choir. We're not sure of the official title, but we do know that she is officially in charge of the Christmas program. Every year, we dust off our church clothes and head out for an hour of beautiful music and a reminder of what Christmas is really all about.

Scott, Tagg and Bompa in their church finery! And no one is sleeping yet!

The Christmas church choir program is one of my favorite moments of the holidays. It's just so pure and spiritual and touching. Plus, I'm always amazed how many people can actually carry a tune! But when those voices sing out in harmony and dance with each other in joy and praise, you kind of forget about the shopping frenzy, the to-do list, the holiday cards, the Santa Clause stuff and you get to focus on the more important things. 

It's worth the early wake-up call, the tights, the ties and even the sweater vest (which for some reason, Tagg HATES...like he violently HATES sweater vests. I will be okay with that someday but they are pretty adorable right now.)

Surviving church services is a whole other ball of wax. To survive the hour with two little people, we had the plastic animals out and were lining them up on the pews then dumping them out of their tube and then putting them back into the tube, we read books quietly, played HexBugs...in the animal tube, played with the Cheerios book (which ended up with a whole bag of Cheerios on the church floor), had snacks, flipped through hymnals, changed an uber-stinky poopy diaper, had a toddler announce - loudly - that he had to go POOP, and put two Goldfish-cracker sticky handprints on the white, dry-cleaned shirt of the guy in front of us. That may be why we don't go to church more often. But it was all worth it...

 

...when you see Grama holding court with her grandkids in all their Christmas finery. Smiles optional.

  

Our little family in our Christmas dress-up duds! Bear in mind that we are all smelling breakfast in the background and have just survived the church-service-nightmare so we're really smiling about...bacon!

Grama and Bompa with the grandkids. Bompa has Sloane, Grama has Tagg, and Ashley has Kayla. Too cute.

The other SLC Harmers...Kent and Nicole with Ashley and Kayla. Kent is the genius behind our new kitchen miracle, and Nicole is the patient generous soul who let us have her hubby for days and days right before Christmas!

Auntee Leese holding court with her kids. The nieces and nephews all adore her and with good reason. Yes, Tagg is yawning but not because he's bored. Seriously. He's got a 100 piece puzzle to do with Auntee Leese and he is fired up about it!

Sloane and Kayla, who are just 2 months apart, love playing Grama's piano. They're actually pretty good at it. Very little banging which means very little ear-covering-up for us adults. And they share really well when they play. Excited to see what the "twins" do as they grow up.

An early Christmas, church, brunch and more presents took their toll on the kids. Open-mouth, snoring, head-bobbing naps for both in the back seat of the car when we left Grama and Bompa's. So we drove the long way to get to Nana and Papa's for Christmas...Four. Mommy and Daddy seriously considered pulling over somewhere so we could all have a car nap. Weird, right? Noooooo! We are tired too!