It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas! (a few pic below)

Have I mentioned lately how much I LOVE Christmas? The music, the food, the decorations, the smells, the chocolates, the fireplace, the shopping, the coffee, the time with friends...I LOVE IT!

This year is extra special because we FINALLY have Mebira home and FINALLY have our complete family together. During one of the four miscarried pregnancies I bought an extra stocking for our third child. Each year, for four years, as I’ve unpacked our Christmas decorations my heart has ached, seeing that empty stocking remaining in the box. Last week, however, we decorated our house, and it was so amazing to bring that fifth stocking out, show it to Mebira and HANG IT UP!

It is so fun to experience everything again through fresh (Mebira) eyes. We put up our garland, our Christmas village, our nativity scene, the stockings, the wreaths, the candles, the angels and when it was done, Mebira looked around and said, "Our house is beautiful, Mom!" A highlight for me was that our girls were like little elves. They were so excited to decorate that they carried almost all of the boxes from the basement upstairs themselves, and then brought them all back down again!

We've asked her about Christmas in Ethiopia. From what she has told us, there were no celebrations at Christmas there. Not in Wolayta in her birth village, and not at the orphanage - at least not that she can remember. She has said a few times, "No Christmas in Ethiopia".

One of my favourite parts is decorating the tree. We put up candy canes in memory of Arvid's mom, and we have crocheted snowflakes from Arvid's grandma that we put up in memory of her, and this year we had a special new addition. While we were in Ethiopia Mebira picked out some ornaments at the pottery place, and we put those up on our tree in memory of her birth family. We're still looking for something in memory of Arvid's dad but will have to think about that a bit more.

Although we're not huge into the Santa thing - we prefer to focus on Jesus as the reason for the season - we do allow Santa to come and fill up our stockings. Really, from school they pick up so much of the Santa stuff...we don't need to highlight it at home. Although I have to admit that I play the "If you fight too much our elf on the shelf (a really fun gift someone gave us last year) will report it to Santa so you better be good!" card. I am not sure how to handle the conversation yet about why Santa didn't go to Ethiopia. I may spill the beans about Santa right after Christmas just so that she doesn't think that Ethiopians are bad and that's why Santa didn't go there. Honestly, it's things like this that can make adoption a bit more challenging - when things you just take for granted get complicated! :-)

OK, here are a few pics. Unfortunately, the quality isn't the best on some of them:

(Below) Big sis reading a Christmas book to little sis. These two are so cute together. Little sis still has big sis wrapped around her finger. :-)

(Below) We LOVE watching Christmas movies together once a week. Here we rewarded ourselves with a Disney Mickey Mouse Christmas movie after we finished decorating. We also love Elf, Shrek the Halls, Narnia movies and the Sound of Music.