nativity pictures

confession: Growing up i knew several families who would dress up and reenact the Christmas story each year.  I thought they were weird for doing so.  Sorry for judging.

So how did we become one of those families?  by complete mistake.

In 2009 (Our first Christmas with kids) James and I and baby Gwenevere at the time, went to our Stake Nativity.  Gwenevere was almost a year but still baby Jesus size, so when they offered to do family photos for free we said "Why Not"

 Gwenevere did such a great job being baby Jesus the couple behind us in line asked to have Gwenevere in their pictures.

 then in 2010 we happened to go again to the Stake Nativity display, and again when asked if we wanted pictures we said "Sure"

In 2011 we had our second baby, And baby Grace was the perfect size to play baby Jesus, so guess what we did: Yep, we took family nativity pictures.

Grace is in the manger

Then in 2012 we decided to skip the Stake Nativity program and instead go to my sister-in-law's piano performance.  What I thought would be the year that ended the nativity pictures was not.  At my sister in law's performance there was a dress up photo booth.  HA! so of course we had to take a picture.  

baby doll for baby Jesus

So this year, with baby Everett and all, as silly as it sounds, I was looking forward to getting our family nativity pictures taken.  But then life happen, the weekend of the Stake Nativity was also the weekend of the progressive pigout, and the MBT ballet, and 100 other fun things. Since we couldn't do everything on our list of wants, choices where made and the Stake Nativity activity was cut.    As hard as it was, I was happy we were able to experience the other holiday activities.  Then to my surprise, James and I along with Everett where asked to participate in reenacting the Nativity story for the Relief Society program at church.  This was by far more embarrassing but in the end we got pictures taken.

unfortunately the girls weren't in costumes but i had to have my family picture. 

Okay so that was a really long way of saying  "This is as close as we got this year."

And yes, I'll admit, next year I hope we can do it again.  I'm not sure how long this tradition will last but for now it's fun to see the changes in our family each year.