Well, gosh, this is embarrassing. I'm only just now posting about our Christmas. It was super busy, but it was wonderful. We watched Christmas movies, listened to Christmas music, ate cookies, and most importantly, cherished our time together as a family. We loved that we were able to celebrate Christmas with Grandma and Grandpa Brown. Having family at Christmas is so special.

Caleb was pretty stoked about Christmas. I think every third picture has him throwing his arms up in excitement. He wanted to help everyone unwrap their gifts and was thrilled with each gift he received. He was at the cutest age for Christmas. We loved watching him!

I got hasty there just jumping immediately to Christmas. Let's step back and look at all the Christmas preparations and festivities.

For Christmas Eve, we all went to the Christmas Eve service at our church, Resurrection Church. It started to snow during the service!

Later that night, Grandpa Don and Josh put their handyman hats on and put together Caleb's train table gift. Go Team Brown!

The snow continued through the night and Christmas morning came as a white Christmas. I've never had a white Christmas and it just made it that much more fun. But more surprising for Caleb was to wake up and discover a blanket of gifts under the tree and a totally awesome train table. Check out his Christmas morning video.

For our family, Christmas gifts are opened Christmas morning. We were all smiles!

We took advantage of the snow and went for a fun, little walk. This wasn't Caleb's first snow experience, but it probably felt like it for him. He was so young last year when it snowed. He was unsure about it on his rain boots, but otherwise seemed to think it was pretty cool.

Before Christmas, we got to see some good friends of the Brown family up in Seattle.

Josh, Caleb, and I also got to see our good friends, Jeff and Melissa, with their son, Thomas. They were in town for the holidays and we got brunch and a quick stop at the park together (but ultimately, too cold to be outside for long!). If you can't tell, Thomas is Caleb's doppelganger.

Caleb is in a major train kick right now. We all went to the Model Train Exhibit in town and he LOVED it. Chooo Chooo! Chugga Chugga! (That's all Caleb seems to say these days)

After Christmas, and after Grandma and Grandpa Brown had headed back home, we got in a lovely family walk at Titlow Park. We got to see a beautiful a rainbow!

Then there was the oven fiasco. OMG, friends. This is the longest, most annoying story. So our oven broke the first week of December. Of all the time in the year, it broke during the highest oven-needed month. UGH! The stove worked, but the oven wasn't heating. We had some repair guys come look to discover there was an electrical fire in the wires where you turn the knobs. It was going to cost more to fix the oven than to replace it, unfortunately.

So we decided we would make the switch to gas. We had a plumber come get a gas hook-up for us (yes, a plumber, they do this apparently). When he was in our crawlspace, he found a leak from a corroded pipe with a HUGE crack. So we had to fix that. (Not sure why the guys we had come out to get rid of the mice didn't see that down there *scratching our heads*). Then when the plumber pushed our stove back into place, the stovetop cracked and became unusable.

We bought a stove/oven from Best Buy. It was a great deal, but when we came home we realized it wouldn't fit with the microwave cabinet that's above the oven. (side note: Josh went to go back to Best Buy, and his car wouldn't work). Finally, we found a gas stove that would fit, but it was more money they we had hoped since we needed a special kind that isn't as widely available.

Story goes, Best Buy comes to deliver - days later than they could originally since they messed up - only to discover they packed the truck with a washer. They didn't know where our oven was! Luckily, it was found again. And they delivered it the Friday after Christmas (it was supposed to be delivered before Christmas, mind you). So no cooking for Christmas except for a hot pot and crockpot.

And that's that. I immediately made Christmas cookies (after Christmas) and a loaf of bread. I missed my oven. This one is pretty awesome, though.

Long story--and that was my effort to shorten it...I warned you.