Christmas- Stop 3: Papa's house for meal and gift exchange

We left the Davis house and headed to Papa's house about 3pm on Christmas day.

Rebecca and Papa had spent the morning cooking turkey and all the fixings. The mashed potatoes and salad we brought rounded out the meal nicely.

After we ate, we opened gifts. Then Ross came over and we all played with several of our new gifts. The big hit of the day was the circuit board that Taylor got from Gramma. All the boys got in on the action...



Papa and Mitzy are resting after a long day...

Christmas Play- Davis house

Cathy and the kids used the book "The Wonder of Christmas" for the Christmas play this year. They acted out the book while Cathy narrated.

Angels rejoicing about Jesus' upcoming birth

Gabriel comes to talk to Mary

The Inn keeper said there was no room at the Inn

Mary and Joseph praying for a place to have the baby

Mary and Joseph have the baby Jesus


Angels come to visit the Shepherds in the field to tell them about the birth of Jesus

(cutest little Shepherd ever!)

Shepherds fall in fright of the Angels

The Wise Men bring Jesus gifts

The cast comes out to take a bow... The End

Great gift from Matthew

This was a great gift we got from Matthew on Christmas morning. Matthew's 4th grade teacher, Mrs. Pellin, had the kids write a letter to their parents about what they are thankful for and he gave us his letter on Christmas morning.

Christmas- Stop 2: Davis gift exchange

The Davis-Seiter-Lott Christmas festivities began about 11am on Christmas morning. The kids distributed all the gifts to each person and we opened gifts one person at a time--- with 12 people total, it took some time!

After the gift exchange, we all gathered together for a birthday party for Jesus in which we sang Happy Birthday to Jesus and shared organic whole grain muffins from ONF.

The final activity of the day was the Christmas play, directed by Cathy Davis and acted by Morgan, Josie, Bethany and Moriah Davis and Matthew, Taylor and Noah Seiter. The pictures from the play will appear in the following Blog entry.

Below are some shots of our gift exchange:

Traditional "matching" Old Navy boys shirts from the Davis family to all the boys



This year, Aunt Cathy began the "Girls matching outfits" and made the outfits below

Josie and Gramma open their sheepskin boots

Christmas morning - at our house with Papa and Rebecca

Our Christmas morning tradition is that Papa and Rebecca (when she's in town) come by early (7am or earlier) Christmas morning. We wait for them to arrive before letting the boys come out to see what Santa brought. This year, the boys awoke at 6:15 -- I called Papa at 6:30 and they came on over quickly -- the boys could hardly contain themselves.

Santa was generous this year and he brought something that didn't make Mom too happy! He brought them a Wii! Matt's playing Wii baseball below...


The boys each open one gift at a time...

Below Noah is opening his special "N" from Mama mae-- she decorated it for his room. Each of the boys got their initial, painted in the colors of the playroom.

Matt and Papa are having fun with the puppets each of the boys got. They plan to put on puppet shows for the family.

Everyone spends time figuring out how to work all the new toys and gadgets.

We had a fun morning. Our family is truly blessed in so many ways. Thank you Lord for these blessings.

Our next stop was over to the Davis house where we had a Birthday party for Jesus and a gift exchange with the Davis family and Gramma.

Christmas Nativity Scene-- reminder of the True Meaning of Christmas

With all the hurry and busy-ness and activities in December, it's good to pause and remember the reason we celebrate... Jesus Christ our Savior!

Below are a few snapshots of our Nativity set-- our reminder that Jesus is the reason for it all.

Did you notice the beautiful Turkish runner under our Nativity set? It was given to us by one of God's servants who is proclaiming the Gospel in Turkey. God, please place your hand of protection on all your servants that are in the mission field, and help all of us to remember that everywhere we are is OUR mission field, especially during this Holy Season!

Rebecca gets to town!

The first day Rebecca got to town for Christmas vacation, the boys went a little crazy!



Rebecca and Papa came over and we played several hands of crazy eights. Rebecca won EVERY game -- we started asking her if she was going to Vegas to take advantage of her winning streak!

Annual "Family Christmas Picture taking" tradition

Well, it's become a tradition of 5+ years. Whomever receives a card from the Seiter's will see us either in front of our fireplace or our tree.

This picture is taken using a tripod and the self-timer on our camera. Jeff gets us all situated and begins the self-timer and runs to join us in the picture.

As one can imagine, using this rather slow method of picture taking with 3 young boys, carries it's own challenges. Although I'm not proud to admit it, we're not above using food bribes to obtain the behavior conducive to cheerful pictures. This year, after our serious pictures were completed, we had a little fun with it. Below is a sampling....

Jeff uses Mom and boys to get the camera aligned



The final serious version we chose


now the silly-ness begins

Yes, Taylor does have underpants on under his shirt :)







And, finally, Christmas pics wouldn't be complete with "Noah Elf" pics!