A Great First Christmas Together!

Our first Christmas together as a family was lots of fun and we felt blessed in so many ways! There are many pics and I will share some of the ones that we have. Inna and Grant were besides themselves with excitement most of the time and Vitali just seemed to kind of take it all in in wonder of all that was happening. He loved his new trucks most of all and has played with the constantly since getting them. He also learned to sing a few Christmas songs....our favorite song that he sung was Jingle Bells, which he pronounces "Gibble Bells".

Grant and Inna caught the spirit of giving this Christmas as they bought each other something special. They had already bought each other something very small at the Secret Santa Shop at school, but Grant & Inna had been given some money by a family member for Christmas and Grant came up to me a few days before Christmas and said that when he and daddy and Inna were in Walmart, Inna saw something that she really liked so much and he wanted to know if he could use his money to buy it for her. It was a "lifesize" Barbie. I told him that that was so sweet of him and if that was what he really what he wanted to do than of course he could, but I also explained that she may not choose to buy something for him with her money as she is so excited to have her own money to buy something with (I tried to manage any expectations, so there wasnt disappointment later :) He told me, "I don't want her to buy me anything, I just want to do this for her because she loved that Barbie". He always has a BIG heart and loves to give, so I pretty much guessed that would be his answer before he even said. Well, I took him to the store and he proudly bought her the Barbie and after she saw it under the tree, she also decided that she too wanted to buy him something special with her money. She bought him a crossbow from the Bass Pro Shop(Nerf arrows) that they were playing with and she knew he really liked. Here are some pics of their gifts to each other:


Vitali and his gal :)

Another one of our favorite things was looking at Christmas lights. We bought some glow sticks and went to the best houses in our area:

Daddy, Inna, and Vitali got out at this house with everyone else and had a closeup look. Grant and I had seen it up close to0 many years in a row to get out in the cold, haha!



This scary guy showed up Christmas morning...ok, it is just Jason in one of his Christmas presents to keep warm at work:


Then, a couple days later, some football in the yard:
Grant getting ready to catch and run:

Jason going vertical :)

Jason's mom, Grandmama, getting in on the action: