Christmas Morning

Would you believe that Paul and I are up first and have to wake up the kids now?  Gone are the days when they would come jumping on our bed for us to get up.  Now the girls would sleep until noon if we let them!  Unfortunately for them we have a busy day and have to get things started.  So they managed to put on a smile and pose on the steps before heading downstairs.

They glance at the tree but head straight to the kitchen to see if Santa ate his cookies and drank his milk and to see if he left a note.  Every year Santa takes a few minutes to write a handwritten note to the kids.  Next stop is to check their stockings and finally onto the presents under the tree.

Once upon a time the kids' presents were wrapped in specific colors for each child.  It made it easy at a glance to see whose presents they were.  Now, the elves that wrap the presents have made it a little trickier.  Any paper can be used for anyone's present and we now have to make sure we look at the tag before opening anything. 

Zach was great at handing out the presents.  Our family takes turns opening so we can see what everyone else got.  Here Zach got his slinky that he was wanting.

Megan got a Hershey Kiss necklace...

...and a New York canvas for her room.

Lauren got a new bright Northface jacket.

Zach got his Skylanders that was on his Christmas list.  That was probably his top toy that he was wanting.

Now this was something that Lauren was really wanting.  :)   (Just kidding!)   A brand new set of those velvet hangers!

This was on Megan's Christmas list, Alice in Wonderland in Blu Ray form. 

Kristin got a collage frame for her room.

Megan showing off her Adventure Time shirt. 

And finally Zach sitting with the pile of toys he got.

Now to get things cleaned up and put away and get ready for part 2 of our Christmas day.

Christmas Eve Night

Who would have thought that feeding the reindeer would be so much fun?  

I even caught a few snowflakes in the picture!

I really think that Megan and Kristin had more fun feeding the reindeer than Zach.

We exchange our family presents before we go to bed.  This year we had to wait until Lauren got home from work.  Zach got a Lightning McQueen pillow from Kristin.

The present that Paul and I gave the kids this year was really cool.  It was one big box filled with separate presents for each of us.

Megan got a long sleeve Flyer's hoodie.

Zach got Flyer's lounge pants and a notebook/pencil set.

Kristin got a long sleeved Flyer's shirt.

Lauren got the same shirt as Kristin did but she also got to open the envelope that was at the bottom of the box.

Inside was a piece of paper that stated that all 6 of us were going to a Flyer's game after Christmas.  Not only were we seeing a Flyer's game but we were seeing the game from a suite.  With food included!  Kristin and Megan are the only ones that have never been to a game but they seemed excited to go.  Lauren and Zachary were definitely excited to go!  Now we have something to look forward to after the big excitement of Christmas day.

Before heading off to bed I had to take the annual picture of the kids in their jammies. 

Now hopefully Santa comes!

Christmas Eve Morning



We were invited again to Christmas Eve brunch at Kelly's house.  Well, really Kelly and Jon's house since they're married now!  It was a nice to start to the day.  Kelly and Jon had plenty of food and it was nice spending time with family.  Megan, Lauren and the boys played a game of Uno.

Kristin just sat there and looked cute.   :)

Alex was having a lot of fun playing the game.

Megan is the "favorite" cousin.  Probably because she's more on their level!

Megan being attacked by all the boys!

All the cousins that were there.  Poor Hayden!  He didn't know what his dad was getting him into!

Lauren taking a selfie with Ryan.  What a pair they make!

Alright, this was absolutely hilarious!  Paul had kept picking on the boys, roughhousing with them and all that.  When the boys weren't looking he hid behind the couch and then we told the boys to go sit with Lauren because we wanted a picture.  We all couldn't stop laughing!

Then Paul jumped out and scared the boys!

I wish I had taken a video!  That was a great way to end a fun morning.

Jingles

Today is our last day to enjoy the antics of our elf, Jingles.  Tonight when he gets placed under the tree Santa will pick him up and take him back to the North Pole. Hopefully we all get a good report!

 

Jingles wasn't too bad this year with messes.  We mostly found him in different places in the house like hanging from our ceiling fan, hanging out in Zach's room, playing with Zach's toys, stuff like that. 

 

One morning we found him looking at our photo book from Mexico. 

He must have been hungry because we found him eating our cereal one morning!

I accidentally left a bag of mini marshmallows out one night.  Jingles took advantage of that.  Looks like he had fun that night!

We'll miss our little mischievous elf!  It's so much fun to find him each morning.  We can only hope that we get lucky enough that Santa sends him back again next year.

Christmas Pageant

This year's Christmas pageant was very thrown together.  Rehearsals kept being cancelled due to bad weather but we did manage to get two in.  Here's the cast of characters from my house:

Megan is Mary.   Kristin is a shepherd.  Zachary is the camel boy.  Yes, I said, camel boy.  You'll see why in a couple of pictures.  Last year Kristin was Mary, Megan was Gabriel and Zach was a shepherd.

This morning we had to be at the church by 8:00 to get into costumes.  The pageant wasn't until 9:00 so the kids had plenty of time to goof off.

The camel boy has to have a camel.  His was very well-behaved and was even on wheels.

The reason why Zach got the role of camel boy is because the wise men didn't pull their own camel, they had a camel boy to do it for them.  He had a choice of shepherd, angel or camel boy and he chose camel boy.  Who wouldn't want to pull a camel if given a choice?

There was still quite some time before the pageant began so I took a few more pictures of my kids.  I guess Mary was camel sitting in this one.

Am I ever able to get just one good picture where they are all smiling instead of making goofy or mean faces? 

So the pageant starts.  Here's Mary.  She had two lines to say during the whole pageant.  Her first was when she saw the angel Gabriel and the second was when gifts were given to baby Jesus from the shepherds. 

Mary and Joseph had to take baby Jesus and flee.  Doesn't Megan make a good Mary?

At the end everyone that was in the pageant came back up to the front.  When I took this picture I was taking it of Zachary.  I didn't realize until later that Kristin was in front of him!

If someone had remembered to move that microphone then this would have been a really good picture.  Kristin is on the right.  Zach is in the front next to the king with pole in front of him.  Of course Mary is the only one in teal.

After  having two confusing practices the pageant ended up coming together nicely.  I wonder what parts the kids will have in next year's pageant?

SNOW!

The weather forecast sure was wrong about the weather today.  We were supposed to only get less than 3 inches of snow and it wasn't going to start until mid-afternoon.  Instead it started snowing around 10:00am and we ended up with 8 1/2 inches of snow.  That's a big difference!  I had to shovel the driveway 3 times because it was snowing so hard that it would completely cover the driveway by the time I was done.  I only shoveled when I did because I thought we were only getting 3 inches.  Oh well.  Zach helped me out some.

In fact Megan and Kristin helped me shovel too so it wasn't too bad.  They took breaks to play in the snow and I took breaks to take pictures of them. 

Megan's friend in the neighborhood came over to play as well as the girls across the street.  Too bad it wasn't snowball kind of snow or we could have really had some fun out there.  The good side is that the lighter snow is a lot easy to shovel! 

With all this unexpected snow came a snow day for me and the kids tomorrow.  That was the nicest surprise of all.  Who couldn't use a snow day?

Kristin is Driving

It took 2 months after she turned 16 but she finally got her license yesterday.  The holdup was because she had to complete her driving time with the instructor before she got her blue slip she could take to the DMV.  It took so long to drive with the instructor because he was backed up from people from this past springs drivers ed class that hadn't done their driving time yet.  They were given preference before the students that took drivers ed this fall.  Anyway...we took her to the DMV yesterday and voila!  She now has her license!  

It's a graduated license.  The first 6 months she has to drive with a supervisor, someone over 25 that has held a license for at least 5 years.  The next 6 months she is allowed to drive by herself but can only have one other person in the car with her (excluding immediate family) and she can only drive between 6 am and 10 pm.  One year from now it becomes a regular drivers license. 

We didn't let her drive home from the DMV for a few reasons.  1) It was pouring down rain.  2) It was during the beginning of rush hour traffic.  And most importantly 3) Paul and I were late leaving for his work Christmas party and didn't want to deal with a slow driver!

So today we let her drive.

She drove Paul's car to his parents' house first, my parents' house second and then back home.  Tomorrow she can drive my car to church and back.  There's nothing like starting her off in bigger cars and back roads!

Jingles Arrives!

This is, I think, the 5th year that Jingles has come to stay with us before Christmas.  Jingles is the elf that Santa sends to us to watch over us.  He reports back to Santa with what he sees so we all had better be good! 

 

We always get surprised with when he arrives since it's not always on the same day each year.  This year I think he came by UPS because when Zach was helping me carry in the packages the package at the bottom had a return address of The North Pole.

 

Yep, it was definitely Jingles.

Our old friend was back!

Santa included a letter recapping what we already knew about how Jingles reports back to him.  Santa also mentioned to Zachary that there definitely was a Mrs. Claus and that she makes wonderful cookies.  There was a little doubt from Zachary beforehand, he didn't think there was a Mrs. Claus.  Now I think he believes it!

So our little mischievous elf is back.  It's always great to see him again but he just gives me extra work to do.  I'm the one always cleaning up his messes!