Holiday in Motion

I've got some back tracking to do. The weekend was super busy so I didn't get any posting done. I do however have some pictures to fool around with in PSE. I'll most likely edit this post later to include them. The important part to me is to talk about our first Christmas with Lexi.

On Friday evening Sara called and asked if she could bring the boys over for us to watch for a few hours while she got errands done and get ready for Chris' work party. I did have plans for us but quickly regrouped and said yes. I had this vision of Geoff outside decorating the house, me and Lexi baking sugar cookies in the kitchen and then later us putting up the Christmas tree. HA! Despite having the boys over, it rained and that blew decorating the house out of the question.

We had all three kids for about 4 hours and just let me say it was fun, they totally wrecked the house and I couldn't have been happier. Sara ended up letting Brennen sleep over so Lexi was in heaven! She loves him so much and they play so well together. As the day wore on I gave up on going to pick out a real tree due to the rain and put up the artificial tree only to discover that a strand of the prelit lights didn't work. Geoff worked for hours trying to find where the problem was and then we gave up and decided that the tree would wait.

So on Sunday after Brennen went home, Lexi and I took a nap while Geoff once again proved what a wonderful husband and father he is. He went out and bought the biggest, most beautiful Christmas tree I've ever had! AND he went grocery shopping for us. So after he returned we had gotten up and the decorating began.

At one point I walked out front to hold the tree while Geoff cut off some of the lower branches. Lexi was standing in the doorway barefoot waiting for us to come in. I swear I think my heart just skipped a beat as I was overcome with emotion just thinking about how grateful I am to finally have her home and to see that precious little face watching us knowing we belong to her.

Once the tree was inside, we began decorating. Lexi just went nuts when I opened box of ornaments! As we worked through them, I remembered two ornaments we had bought for her in China. We were filled with emotion as we gave them to her just knowing we had gotten them 9 months ago. Of course, she was not nearly as impressed. I also found one of the ornaments given to me during one of the exchanges that we did during the wait. (See that post: http://waitingforlexi.blogspot.com/2006/12/ornaments.html) It had Lexi's name on it. I tried to get a picture of her with it but she just wanted to throw it! LOL! Lexi really enjoyed unboxing our White House ornaments. Geoff's mom used to give us one every Christmas (we love them and miss them *hint* *hint* MIL). Thanks to Lexi, the boxes are all now mixed-matched.

We hung our stockings and Geoff cooked dinner for us. It was the perfect afternoon. We are so thankful that our Lexi is home.