So, for those of you who check out our blog – it’s been forever since we posted -sorry!! These last few weeks have been a little crazy. I love this time of the year though, so I wouldn’t trade the craziness for anything. We are truly enjoying our first Christmas home with Ayan. 

We have decorated our house, made Christmas cookies, drank hot chocolate, read Christmas books, watched Christmas movies, spent blessed time with family and friends, and much more. I really love decorating for Christmas, and I loooove cheesy Christmas movies!! It drives Aaron crazy. Ayan put his snowman ornament from Kazakhstan and his choo-choo ornament on the tree, then he was ready to be done! Ayan especially loves reindeer – he has watched the old Rudolph movie narrated by Burl Ives many times. He is also obsessed with our dancing Santa bear! He dances around the house while the bear dances- it’s so cute. We haven’t tried pictures with Santa yet, but we talk about it, and Ayan says he doesn’t want to meet Santa. Ha! We’ll see about that…

One of the sweetest things was putting up my nativity with Ayan. He loved hearing the story of Jesus’ birth. He especially loves that there were sheep and donkeys in the stable with baby Jesus! We’ve re-arranged the nativity and played with baby Jesus many times since then. It’s really sweet to hear him say “Babee Jees.” We want him to learn as a child the true meaning of this special holiday.

Today, Ayan and I decorated a little tree for his room. It’s his Kazakh tree. We filled it with ornaments that we used to decorate our tree in Kazakhstan last year – mostly snowflakes and snowmen. Appropriate, huh? Right now in Astana (where we adopted Ayan from), they are covered with snow and have temps way below zero! And I think it’s cold in Texas today – ha! We also bought ornaments in Kaz that we used to decorate his tree.  In Kazakhstan, traditionally they do not put up Christmas trees – they put up New Year’s trees. So, we’ll leave up his Kazakh tree through the New year. I hope it’s something he finds very special as he grows up.

We hope your family is enjoying this Christmas season as much as we are and making great memories together!

Love, Steph