Claire's First Christmas

Claire had a very special first Christmas. It was a wonderful Christmas for our little family. As with many things, having a child opens you up to seeing everything through different, new eyes. 

We did lots of fun things leading up to the big day...

We dedicated Claire at church on December 8th. It was a great day with family, and having it at Christmastime made it even more memorable. We didn't know if at the time but our wonderful pastor, Brother Gary, would be retiring in a couple months. Brother Gary baptized me and married me and Cam, and we're so thankful he was there for Claire's dedication. My mom found this beautiful smocked nativity dress while visiting Charleston and it was so perfect for the day. 

 

We got the house all set up to celebrate the season and decorated our Christmas tree. And what do you know...the tree didn't fall over or die 3 weeks before Christmas like it did last year!!!! A Christmas miracle!

Claire and Grace visited Santa together. Their nerves got the best of them-ha! Poor Grace had a pretty hilarious meltdown and then it was Claire's turn. She took turns staring at Santa in wonder and crying. Poor baby! But Santa was very sweet and Claire looked precious in her adorable candycane smocked dress that Gigi gave her before she was even born.

We baked lots of Christmas cookies. I sang lots of Christmas songs to my sweet girl when I rocked her to sleep. These were some of my most favorite moments. I may have even started way back in October! :)

On Christmas Eve we got to have lunch with my Uncle Steve, Aunt Doris, and cousin Audrey. They were in town from California and it was so great to see them! Claire enjoyed getting to meet them for the first time. 

From there, we went to my parents' house and I helped my mom cook Christmas dinner. My brother-in-law's parents were in town from Washington and we went to a beautiful Christmas Eve service together and came home to eat an amazing dinner and open presents. We all got lots of nice things. Claire loved her Little People barn and her babydoll. We spent the night at my parents' house. Cam and I stayed up late with my mom and dad getting everything set up for Christmas morning! So much fun!

The next morning we got our little elf up and took her downstairs to see what Santa had brought. Claire got a rocking bunny and a princess riding toy, among lots of other fun things! It was awesome to see our sleepy little ragamuffin crawl across the floor in excitement to see her gifts. We ate a big breakfast, played a bit, and got cleaned up and on the road to head to Sugar Land for round 2! 

We got to Cam's parents' house just in time for a delicious meal. Then we headed over to Cam's grandparents' house for the big Todd Christmas extravaganza! Cam has a huge family and when everyone gets together it is chaotic and so much fun! We visited and opened lots of nice gifts. Later we headed back to Gigi and Poppy's to open presents with Cam's immediate family and his other grandmother, Mimi. We all got lots of awesome gifts! Claire especially loved her zoo train and popcorn walker toy. We spent the rest of the evening enjoying being together with family. It was a wonderful day!

Are you exhausted yet? Cam and I treat Christmas like a marathon. I'll admit I was very apprehensive about traveling on Christmas with a baby. Even when it was just the two of us, there were times when it left us feeling stretched very thin. We're really close with both sides of our family and we just can't bear having to "choose" one place to be and not getting to see both sides of our family on Christmas Day, so we've made the mid-day trip each year since we got married. It requires a lot of planning and some serious packing, but it's always worth it! We are so lucky that our families help us pull this off by arranging meals so we can be there, etc. Since it was Claire's first Christmas and she was young enough to go with the flow about the whole thing, we made it happen and I'm so glad we did! It was seriously the smoothest Christmas we've had since we started doing this! It was so wonderful to get to celebrate with all the people we love!

Christmas 2013 will definitely go down as our best yet! Our little girl is so blessed to have so many loving people in her life to help make her first Christmas so special. I'm already looking forward to next year!