Santa Baby

This was Claire's first experience of Santa--ever! :) Needless to say, it was a typical holiday picture moment...just about the same as every other one year old's reaction to Santa. Austin and I went to my parents' ward Christmas party, and they were taking pictures. We couldn't pass it up! :) We had a great time with the 1st ward, but by the end of the night, Claire was ready to go to bed. Maybe next year she will be more interested in the "Santa moment."  Daddy and I love you, Claire!

Claire Loves To Help

 Claire LOVES to help rake the leaves! This was from today, in our backyard (out by the garden plot).

She did such a great job helping, maybe I should have paid her some Christmas money. :)

Claire loves these leaves. She especially likes to rake the pile of leaves, then go and sit down prim and lady-like in the pile. Sometimes she'll let me put some leaves on top of her lap to "bury" her in the leaves, but not today. :)

 Our busy little girl. She hasn't been quite herself, what with teething, a bit of a runny nose and cough, and all the Christmas-time busy-ness going on at our house.

 Austin was so excited to unwrap a nutcracker from Britta this year for Christmas! Claire was loving on it, but was not particularly happy about the getting her picture taken part.

Austin and his first official nutcracker for our home. :) It's almost Christmas! We are getting so excited over here at our house! :)

Christmas FHE

Usually Austin and I just read a Ensign article for Family Home Evening. But I thought, "Hey, Claire will be going into nursery in a few months (this upcoming March). I bet that we could start teaching FHE out of the nursery manual Behold Your Little Ones to get her used to listening to a "real" lesson. :) So last night, that is exactly what we did. Since Christmas is coming up in a few weeks, we learned about the lesson titled "Jesus Christ is the Son of Heavenly Father." (This was the Christmas lesson.) The picture above is the one pictured in the manual. We talked about Jesus being born of Mary and about Him being born also as the Son of God. I pointed to the baby and told her "this is baby Jesus." She looked at Austin and I, then pointed at Jesus and said "Baby!" This was a precious moment to me...to hear Claire reacting to us trying to teach her about her Savior. We pointed to the Star in the background, and Claire started doing the actions for "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star." We explained that the Star was a sign of Jesus' birth. I love how quickly Claire is learning and growing. And at this Christmas time of year, I'm so glad that I have the opportunity to teach my sweet daughter the reason for this joyous season--the celebration of Christ's birth, the Redeemer of the world.