A Blessed Christmas

Merry Christmas from the Purcell Family!

We hope everyone had a Merry Christmas...we sure did!

We started our Christmas celebration with the candlelight service at our church on Christmas Eve...this is one of my favorite services of the year! There's just something about seeing darkness turn to light as candles light up a room...and to top that everyone raised their candles and sang Silent Night...it was beautiful! It was particularly special this year as we remembered last year attending the same service with Riley being only 1 week old!

I am so thankful to have Jason home for Christmas and I have been thinking about the families who are seperated during such a special holiday. Thanksgiving was very hard and I imagine Christmas would be even harder.

Here's our family pic from this year...a goofy one and a good one!

After church we headed to Jason's parents house for some Spaghetti and Meatballs...this is a special family meal because Jason's grandma from New York made the meatballs and they are the BEST! Riley got to have Nani's meatballs for the first time and to say she loved them is an undertatement!

After a huge meal of meatballs Riley went to bed like a good little girl and she had no idea what the next morning would entail!

Christmas morning we all slept in until Riley woke up and then the wrapping paper started flying!

Riley did GREAT unwrapping her presents and she gave equal attention to each and every one. Jason would quickly run off into another room when she opened a present that required "assembly" so she could play with it!

She was especially cute to watch with her stocking...I think she thought it was a neverending supply of presents...she just kept sticking her hand in and finding something new to pull out!

Grammie and JoePa got Riley this little musical stage and she LOVES it...boy does this little girl have moves? As soon as the music comes on she is shaking her little booty...so cute!

After we opened all of our presents at home we discovered that Jason had added his own little decoration to the tree...a buzz bait and a worm...glad it had his touch!

We lounged around a bit and let Riley take a nap after all of her exhausting work at opening and playing with her presents! She did have her first real boo boo playing with one of her new presents...a cardboard puzzle if you can believe that! She fell on the corner of one of the puzzle pieces and got a pretty good scrape under her eye...she was pretty upset about it but it hasn't slowed her down a bit!

We then headed back to Jason's parents house for a WONDERFUL turkey meal...boy was it good! After dinner we had more presents (and stockings) to open!

It has become VERY obvious to us as of late that Riley loves bags...purses, handbags, giftbags, shopping bags...the type is not so important but the girl loves to have a bag and loves to throw it over her shoulder! Her DiDi got her a Dora backpack and she loves it...she looks way to old in this picture but she is so stinkin' cute with that little backpack on!

Jason got his share of putting toys together but he was great and he put them together quicker than I could turn around because he wanted his little girl to have a chance to get to those toys!

Jason got a special gift from Uncle Sam on Christmas Day...Captain's bars! Jason officially became Captain Purcell on Christmas Day...we are so proud of you!