The Nativity

This past weekend, I kinda sorta invited myself over to my parent's house.

I was craving old times, where we'd blast Christmas music, drink hot cocoa, and decorate the house together. It turned into something I really love doing with my mom. And even now that I have my own house to decorate, it's just so much cozier at her's. So Elliott and I made ourselves at home and got to work.

Okay, we actually got just about nothing done to help my mom out in the decorating department. But I got to look through all of my old ornaments, and Ellie got to decorate cupcakes and drink hot chocolate and pretty much just be spoiled with sweets and attention. It was a good day. I did get my cocoa (with peppermint marshmallows.....yum!) and we did help my mom with one very special decoration: The Nativity

I almost teared up watching my mom and Ellie, both so focused and sincere, pull each piece of the Nativity scene out of the box. My mom would explain what each piece was and why it was important. Ellie was incredibly gentle with the fragile pieces (as gentle as an almost-two-year-old can be) and seemed to be paying attention, for the most part. It was a really sweet, tender moment.

Once all the pieces were out of hiding, my mom let Ellie play with them, as long as she was being gentle. And while Ellie was gentle for about 20 minutes or so, she was also pretty silly. This girl has quite the imagination. She was very concerned that baby Jesus had a stinky diaper, which she needed to change. She kept plugging her nose and saying "eewww, stinky dipe!" "change diaper"

I laughed so hard. It was one of those mom moments that I'll never forget.