Christmas and New Year's

We had a pretty mellow Christmas. It was perfect! Christmas Eve was just our little family. We let the kids open their Christmas jammies a little early so that I could get them bathed and do the girls hair for church the next day. (So glad I did that - it made it so much easier to get ready for church Christmas day!) After dinner, we did our present to Jesus, reading all of the nice things that our family had done for each other all month. The kids loved that! We read our Christmas stories and watched the church's 5 minute video on the nativity. Like I said - perfect! The kids fell asleep pretty quickly, so we were able to get to bed fairly early ourselves! Christmas morning the kids were a little slow waking up, but when they finally got up they loved everything. Big brother is loving his garage and his dishwasher, Little sister LOVES her barbie house, and Big sister is thrilled with her DS. Little brother loved all the wrapping paper, of course. We went to church, and then went to wife's parents for lunch, which was very nice. We had dinner with husband's family and the kids enjoyed seeing their cousins. All in all, a wonderful Christmas!

Christmas jammies

Little brother's jammies look like a Santa suit, but I almost like him in just his diaper and the hat!
opening presents
little brother really seems to like his excersaucer!

For New Year's, Big sister wanted to switch the dinner tradition from IHOP to Olive Garden. Unfortunately, about 900 other people were at Olive Garden, too. We didn't want to wait an hour just to be seated, so we ended up at IHOP. It was yummy as always - big brother loves pancakes! We came home and did our chocolate fountain and set off the poppers. Little brother did not like those very much, so we ended up finishing them in the basement after he went to bed. The kids were all in bed by 8:30 and we were in bed before 11:30. Well, except for niece who went to a singles dance! I'm kinda liking our tradition of sleeping through the New Year!

Loving the chocolate fountain

And last but not least, an adorable video to get the year started right. On New Year's Day, the kids were in the playroom throwing balls at husband. I came down and put little brother in his lap and little brother started laughing harder than we've ever heard him laugh. His face turned red he was laughing so hard!