Merry Christmas

Is there anything more exciting than being a kid on Christmas morning??

     Santa's gifts.  

     Little Man asked for two Cars 2 cars, one of them being a very obscure one that he had never seen in the store because, "Santa doesn't get things from stores.  His elves make them in the workshop, so I should ask him for something you couldn't get in the store."  Ummm....apparently not only do the stores not carry this car (although I did locate one Ebay for 66.00 for one diecast car!), but Santa's  workshop was out of this particular car also, because he brought him a different car and a Cars 2 storage container that also shoots the cars out.  Luckily, Little Man didn't seem disappointed at all and has happily conducted countless car races in the past few days.
      A couple months ago, we received an American Girl magazine in the mail.  Since we have never bought anything from American Girl, I'm not sure where they got our address or how they knew we had children that would be American Girl doll age.  Kiwi poured over the pages and pages of dolls and started saying that she wanted an American Girl doll for Christmas.  We assumed that she would forgot about the dolls and want something else by the time Christmas came around, but she stayed consistent with the American Girl doll request.   An American girl doll with braids to be more exact.  Santa brought Isabella (named by Kiwi), a doll with a wardrobe and a couple of outfits. As Little Man repeatedly reminded us, Santa has elf making toys, but I hope that if he does ever order toys from a store that Santa was aware of Target's dolls that look like American Girl dolls, but are 1/3 the price and that they had a doll with a wardrobe and clothes for sale right after Thanksgiving.  Of course she didn't have braids...but I'm sure an elf or perhaps Mrs. Claus could take care of that pretty easily with a comb and a couple of hair rubberbands.  
      Mason got the Little People zoo and explored it in his own cautious way for a few minutes (what is this toy doing here?  Why are my brother and sister ten times crazier than usual? Where is my morning oatmeal?), and then broke out his cute dimple smile and started putting the zoo keeper down the slide repeatedly saying "Wheee."      

     In the weeks leading up to Christmas, each of the big kids did extra jobs to earn money to buy presents for each family member.  We then took a family trip to the dollar store where they were able to pick out gifts for each other and us.  Little Man even choose to do extra extra jobs so he would have money to get the grandparents special gifts from just him which I thought was really sweet.  

This is the second year we have done this and I love it.  The kids are so excited to choose things out for each other, wrap them, and put them under the tree.  The above picture was taken after they had opened up their gifts to each other.  

    Little Man choose this beautiful ring for me at the Holiday Store they do at school and the picture below is the candle he got me from the dollar store and the flowers that Kiwi choose for me.  I put them as the centerpieces for our Christmas breakfast.  Mike received a statue of a little girl from Kiwi, "because this little girl kind of looks like me and Daddy could put it on his desk" and a pack of football cards from Little Man.  I am excited for next year when Mason will have more of a say in the gifts he picks out for other people (this year I picked a book from him for his siblings).

 Breakfast consisted of smoothies and cinnamon rolls (made by my sister in law who called Christmas Eve saying that she was making cinnamon rolls for her family, but they had too many to eat and would we like some?  I am not one to turn down free cinnamon rolls, especially if made by my sister in law).

We had church at 11:00 and this was the best picture I got of all three kids in their church clothes.  This is after church with untucked shirts and something crazy going on with Kiwi's hair and that headband, but they still look  precious to me.

       After church, we headed to my parents house where we were able to Skype with my brother Mat, who is in Russia on his mission. We loved talking to him and the time flew by.  There were more than a few tears shed when we hung up (not until after we hung up so he didn't see) but it was a combination of happy/sad tears.  He looked great and sounds so happy, but we miss him.  My parents and Marcus especially.  I can't imagine what it will be like when one of my children goes.  I miss Little Man when he's at school...
      Later the E family came over and we enjoyed dinner, a huge spread of desserts, and games.  Poor Mike wasn't feeling very good and his knee was really hurting (he had knee surgery the week before Christmas), so he spent a lot of the night laying on the couch, but all in all it was a good Christmas.