happy birthday Jesus!

Our Christmas was perfect.  beautiful.  blessed.  As Christmas should be!

We placed a tiny lit tree right outside of Dominic's room.  All of his Christmas books were lined up down the stairs, and chocolate gold coins (based on the tradition of St. Nicholas) made a trail from his bed to his stocking.

The boys found their stockings!

As you can tell by the sunrise, we were up fairly early. :)

Capturing our sweet angel on his First Christmas.  We truly love this little person!

After checking out the treats St. Nicholas left in our stockings, we got dressed up and went to 8am mass.  Dominic was so excited to see baby Jesus instead of an empty manger.

 When we got home, it was time for presents!  We bought Dominic 3 gifts, just like baby Jesus received from the wise men-  a couple of dress-up costumes, a lego set and a tricycle!  I also made the boys give each other a little gift, as a bonding exercise :).

We had a french toast casserole for breakfast-- YUM!  Might be the start of a new tradition...

And now for the "big bow" gift...

We probably could have done this earlier, but here we are finally placing baby Jesus in our nativity set!

After playing with our new gifts and taking naps, we headed to Tom and Shannon's for a wonderful Christmas dinner with the Ricci clan.   

I love how Shannon always makes a birthday cake for Jesus.  

Finally, for our Christmas dat finale we went to Grandpapa and Grandmaman's for another delicious Christmas dinner and gift exchange.  As usual, we were having such a great time that I barely pulled out my camera...