Caleb's First Christmas!

Christmas was a lot of fun this year. It was a quiet morning where opening presents took all of 5 minutes. Matt and I had very few surprises for each other as we shopped for his presents together (a new suit, tie, white shirts), and I was able to guess most of my presents. I got a new scrapbooking software that I'm really excited about, now that all our pictures are digital. Scrapbooking can get really expensive too with all the cute paper and extras that go into it. I'm excited to do everything on the computer now...when I get to it. Caleb could have cared less...next year will be fun when he actually will be interested in presents rather than just sucking on any and everything within reach.

Christmas Eve is the one event where my mom requests everyone's presence. We usually will have the missionaries over as well as a few of my parents' friends and have a big production with dinner, chimes, and a musical production where all the kids provide some sort of singing or piano performance. This year, one of my siblings (who shall remain nameless) felt it should just be our family. So we just did dinner, chimes, and white elephant presents. It was fun, but I actually missed having the missionaries. I always enjoy participating in the musical program as well and reading the Christmas story together. It was so fun to have Clayton back from his mission to be there with us this year!

One other thing that I really miss about Christmas growing up in my family is caroling. Matt loves to sing, but has an issue with changing keys often throughout a song. Hopefully our kids will get my singing abilities instead of his :) so that we can start this tradition in our family some day.

Here are a few pictures:

Getting ready for our ward Christmas party. Caleb's hat reads 'My 1st Christmas'.

Caleb's cute Santa outfit loaned to us by Jared and Kari (my brother and sister-in-law).

All of Caleb's presents (none of which we got him!) The only present not seen here is the swing that Grandma and Grandpa Shurtliff got him. The fleece blanket is the theme in his room.

He loves the big toy that Grandma and Grandpa Call got for him. It sings all sorts of fun songs and lights up too. He is really working on his hand coordination skills as he tries to press all the buttons to make the music play.

(Just in case you were wondering, Caleb can't sit up by himself yet, although he's close. He's leaning against the toy.)