Linds and Thad: Merry Christmas!!

Our best Christmas present of all was the last-minute snow storm on Christmas Eve!! So we got to have a white Christmas after all. It snowed a little the day before, but this was much better!

We had such a fun Christmas. It was supposed to be Thad's family's year, but I'm so close to having the baby (we did the 14-hr drive two years ago when I was 37 weeks prego with Benji: not fun) and Thad is saving his few days off of work for when the baby comes and didn't have enough time off to make the drive anyway, so we decided to spend Christmas here with my parents. On Christmas Eve, we started the evening with our traditional dinner of cheese fondue and a caesar salad. Oh I love Christmas Eve dinner! Then we drove around and looked at Christmas lights, and came home to act out the Christmas story. By then the kids were tuckered out, so we read them "Twas the night before Christmas," and put them to bed. I was feeling sick so I put myself to bed at the same time and rested for a bit before I headed back upstairs to help Thad finish wrapping presents and filling stockings. We turned in around midnight.

Ana was a beaming Mary and Benji was supposed to be Joseph, but we think he looked more like a ninja

Yay it's Christmas morning! We are watching cartoons, waiting for gma and gpa to wake up so we can go upstairs and open our presents!

So we scored big with Benji this year. As you can tell from the following pictures. He would have been delighted with just his Home Depot tool bench. The Matchbox cars and airplanes were icing on the cake. He was in toy heaven all day.

Ana was another story. She switched her mind about what she wanted a few weeks before Christmas, and I had already gotten a few of her original items, plus some surprises. I don't think it's fun to get kids everything they want. Where's the surprise in that? Well, Ana wasn't as enamored with her cool princess castle tent as I thought she would be (that was a surprise present from Santa). She thought it was cool, and then asked where her next present was. And the next. She opened her presents so fast that she was done way before the rest of us, and she seemed really disappointed by that. She didn't say anything; it was more the look on her face and her lack of excitement. Even with the tent, and the bike helmet that she originally asked for, and the nail polish, and warm fuzzy slippers, and little Belle doll ... not sure where we went wrong. Not enough things for her to play with? What a disappointing feeling that you failed at making your child's day with at least ONE present?! Thad and I felt horrible all morning. I talked to my mom about it and she said she remembers that happening a few times to her and my dad. And she said this probably won't be the last time it happens to me. I just didn't think it would happen when my daughter was only 4!

Ana and Benji made these necklaces for gma and gpa, out of tube pasta, food coloring, and twine. They were supposed to be red and green, but I left the new food coloring box that I had just bought, in the back of Thad's car, so we had to use what was in the cupboard, which was orange and green. So ... not super Christmasy, but the kids still had fun making them.