The Welch Family: Jackson's first Christmas

We hope you had a very Merry Christmas! We sure did. Little did we know that last Christmas would be our last Christmas as a duo. Jackson has been such a wonderful addition to our family and he made the holidays all the better this year!

Our Christmas celebrating started on the 23rd with Marty's side of the family. His brother Stephen and his wife came in from Virginia and his brother Tom who has been in Minnesota came in however we didn't all get to get together. Tom and his wife Andrea tried to make it up but ended up getting stuck in Wilsonville and had to turn back around. It was a bummer that we couldn't all get together but the time we had with everyone else was wonderful. I ended up forgetting my camera so I will have to try to get some photos from Marty's mom and hopefully take more when we get together again tomorrow before Stephen and Kayleen head back to Virginia.

We stayed the night with Marty's family Tuesday night then headed back to Dayton for Christmas eve evening with Anna's family. This is the first year we have not made a Christmas eve service. The services at our church were cancelled and it ended up taking us 3 hours to get back to Dayton so we were just tired and Jackson had enough so we stayed in. We had a great time wrapping presents. The boys spent a lot of 'boy time' in Anna's Dad's shop. It was fun to hear the loud man laughter coming from the shop while the girls took care of stockings, and watched more Christmas movies.

Christmas morning we woke up, read the Christmas story, opened presents and stockings, and had a yummy breakfast. Jackson got a lot of really fun presents, he is such a loved little man! Marty was thrilled that Jackson got some more books to add to his book collection. Marty is a bookaholic so is eager to pass that on to Jackson and so far, he seems to LOVE LOVE LOVE books!

We had Christmas dinner at Anna's Grandma's house. As always the menu was grand and we had VERY full bellies by the end of the night!

Here are some photos of our day. I have not been able to upload all photos yet as we have been taking photos with 3 different cameras the past few days.

Blessings to you and your families! Stay warm and have a very Happy New Year!!