Christmas

We hope this post finds all of our dear friends warm and cozy. We also hope you had a blessed Christmas day and that you continue to embrace the Christmas spirit through the season. We have been so blessed by being surrounded by family. My brother, Andrew, and his family are visiting from New Hampshire. Madi has really enjoyed her time with cousin Matthew and they've managed to reacquaint themselves wonderfully. It's hard to believe they've been gone from Florida for almost two years.

Since about November, Madi was declaring that she wanted "nothing" from Santa. Soon after, she switched her request to a photograph of Santa with the elves, reindeer and Mrs. Claus. Okay. Request sent to Santa for consideration.

We noticed that Madi had absolutely no interest in communicating with Santa this year. She had no desire to go see him anywhere. We tried to figure out why, and we're still not sure. She claims fear wasn't an issue.

A few weeks before Christmas, an elf on the shelf appeared in our house. Madi loved our elf, who she named Peter, and generally put on her best behavior for him to take her case back to Santa each night. We all had a great time trying to figure out just where Peter landed in our house each morning as he traveled back from the North Pole. Madi decided her last plea to Santa was for "a surprise".

Santa came through with "a surprise" and brought Madi a new bike AND the framed photograph that she requested. So YES people--if any of you would like to see Santa, the elves, Mrs. Claus and the reindeer--we will be happy to share this top secret treasure with you! We might just be the only family who requested and received such a personal item from Santa! We were so happy that Santa decided to leave something special for Charlie too.

One of the highlights of our day was giving Daddy his gift. Madi is not very good at keeping secrets and tried hard to spill the beans on more than one occasion. Daddy has been obsessed with onesies for a while now. It's a weird long story that started with him making fun of some crazy guy on the last season of American Idol. So for months, he would tease Madi and Daniel and tell them he was going to put them in a onesie if they acted up. We showed him. We heard a little rumor that Target was selling man-sized onesies. Madi went right to the big red one with sock-monkey feet. It was perfect, and Madi totally received the gift of giving! Daddy was the best sport in the world, as usual, and made our day as he rode his bike around the neighborhood wearing his gift. As you can imagine, we laughed so hard we cried.

Special thanks to all of you who sent a stocking stuffer for Daniel. Jimmy, Grandpa Murphy, Madi and I took time to read all of them together on Christmas. We collected 27 of the most heartwarming stories and memories of Daniel and how he touched your lives. It was so special to us and we truly appreciate that you took time out of your busy season to do that for us. These are keepsakes forever, and we were amazed at the similarities between each tribute. We are well aware that he's your angel too.