This is a test shot. These are my “littles”. Me: “Oh please oh please don’t smile like that…it looks like you are in pain.., Amelia, look at Mommy”

Scratch that …I will change the camera angle…I bring in the “bigs”. Cute picture but its all blown out..I do some more adjusting..

this one was too dark and I had to do some work to bring it “back” but it still looks terrible but the kids are all looking pretty good.

This is where I started to lose them…

AH!! I can’t take it!

and this is what I was left with… trying to get the “perfect” picture is almost as painful for me as it was for my “littles”.

Go figure..

Off we head to the recital.

Our girls were scheduled in the middle time slots of the recital. We listened to Jingle Bells a few hundred times.  Amelia was chomping at the bit to watch her big sisters play.

“Hey kid, don’t chew on that”

Finally…

Briana played “Joy to the World”. She was very nervous that she would make a mistake, but she didn’t. Maybe next time she will be less nervous and have a little more fun.

Juliana played “Jingle Bells”. She was slightly nervous petrified. But she was determined to get up there and show her stuff.

Adriana played “Go Tell it on a Mountain”. Of all of the girls, I thought she would be the most nervous because she is our introvert, but she wasn’t.

Amelia was so proud of her big sisters.

Here are all the big kids with their lovely music teacher.

We all were very proud. You did a wonderful job girls!

We don’t do the whole Santa thing so we don’t do the cookies and milk or hidden Santa gifts or any of that. People are generally appalled that we deprive our children of that experience but let me assure you that our kids enjoy Christmas as much as the next.  The little kids even love Santa, and want their pictures made with “Santa”. But they all know the big guy really doesn’t bring them presents.

We only had a couple last minute things to assemble and we were busy filling their little stockings. I think this is the first year in years that we have not been up until 2 am assembling things. We purposefully chose things that did not require us to spend countless hours putting them together. We wanted to make Christmas as stress free as possible. (Did you know that Christmas is the #1 day in the US for heart attacks?) We were in bed by 10pm,  making this the longest night of sleep on a Christmas Eve than I have ever had in my life even though the boy was up at 5. We then tortured our kids by making them wait for us to shower and making everyone get dressed before heading down to begin the festivities. Hey- at least we didn’t make them eat breakfast first.

The first picture of the day

This little Waldorf playhouse was one of the things that we assembled the night before. It was intended for our 2 year old Amelia but it seems as if the whole gang loves to hang out and play in there. I was surprised about how big it actually was, there is actually room for all 5 kids to play in it at the same time.

This is the first tree that I let the kids decorate all by themselves. I didn’t even wait for them to go to bed and rearrange the whole thing like I usually do. I resisted temptation and left it exactly as they did it. Or more realistically I am 11 weeks pregnant and was just too sick/tired/lazy to do a bit of it.

Why do kids start fake smiling when a camera is pointed at them? I tried so hard to capture the excitement of the day by taking non-posed, natural pictures. But those kids see a camera point their way and they pose, and they cheese, and they fake smile. The dreaded fake smile..

Look at that kid on the left. Could she smile any harder? Fake. The one on the right, well that’s pretty natural.

And look at this one. It starts so young.. don’t even ask me what is going on with her eyes.

As a side note: does anyone know what is causing that shadow at the bottom of my pictures? It happens often and completely irritates me and I have no idea what causes it.

I love this guy’s smile. I love the way he looks at me with those big wonderful blue eyes….

We take our kids and let them pick out gifts for each of their siblings. They have so much fun going on a special shopping trip all by themselves and getting to spend time alone with their daddy. They put so much thought into what they plan to get for everyone and even make lists before they go. They really love to give as much (or more ) than receiving.

“It is more blessed to give than to receive” (Acts 20: 35).

They are always more excited to hand out the presents they picked out than to open their own. These two picked out the same thing for each other. It was funny when the boy opened his from her and he freaked because he thought it got mixed up somehow. There is that smile- again. Boy, could you please stop doing that with your lips?

I love this look. She is trying to figure out what in the world she had just gotten. It was a foam puzzle. The very first we have ever purchased.

We don’t really buy much for the kids the during rest of the year so we don’t really feel bad about going “overboard”, and let’s just face it, we do go overboard. We do buy a lot of things that can be used for homeschooling like Ravensburger puzzles, building toys, art supplies and science kits or things that may go along with what we are studying. We also try to stick to natural toys and toys that encourage them to use their imagination like the Waldorf play stands and the Playmobil collections, baby dolls, dress up clothes, play silks and the kitchen set. Our children love Playmobil and it is one of the only plastic toys that I will buy. Playmobil is one of those toys where my kids can get lost in their imagination together for hours. We have very few of those colorful, plastic, battery operated toys but instead opt for more natural and environmentally friendly toys. At one time we had quite a few but I slowly removed them from our home.

This is the gift that my little Juliana picked out for me. I love making homemade popsicles. She loves to eat them.

Our littlest princess giving her new dress up dress a whirl.

Here Juli is trying out her big sister’s new stilts. I tried them out on Christmas Eve while the kids were sleeping and boy are they are so much fun. I had a pair of red wooden ones as a child and they were always one of my favorite toys. I would have loved to have found a wooden set.

Briana just started taking violin lessons recently and has been borrowing one to practice on. We decided on waiting for Christmas to buy one her size instead of just renting one. She had no idea we were planning on getting one any time soon. She was very surprised and couldn’t wait to pick it up and start playing.

Talk about thrilled. Take a look at that mouth face.

The gifts are fun. They are fun to pick out, fun to give, fun to open. There is no doubt though, the most wonderful gift in this world is this precious family that we are blessed with.  We are so thankful for all that we have. We are so blessed to have such a wonderful life, we have beautiful,smart, creative, thoughtful, happy, healthy children, a warm home and some really great friends to share it all with.

The most wonderful gift we could ever receive is from our father above. Have you heard?

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.  (John 3:16 NIV)

And listen to this!

But when the kindness and the love of God our Savior toward man appeared, not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us, through the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit, whom He poured out on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Savior, that having been justified by His grace we should become heirs according to the hope of eternal life. (Titus 3:4-7)

Wow. A gift. Just like those material gifts that we just exchanged freely. But much, much better. Just like that. A gift. Amazing.

Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above  (Jas. 1: 17, ASV)

Merry Christmas from the Baker Family.

CHEESE…