Christmas

Our kids had a pretty awesome Christmas. Rachel was kind enough to spend Christmas Eve with us, since during Christmas Eve day Doug and I were in Sequoia Park showshoeing (more on that later). The kids had a great time with her and then we all had a nice ham dinner when we got back. Read the Christmas story, sang Silent Night, said a family prayer and then marched them up the stairs, as neither Mommy nor Santa had done a single bit of wrapping yet!

This was just about Kylie's only present from us. She's young enough to not care (Keilana and Dylan opened all her presents and stocking stuffers), so we used her share on the big kids this year! She loves this thing, though. Usually she just takes the lid off and dumps everything out and then loads it back in, but sometimes she tries to get the shapes in like her brother. That mostly involves just violently pounding the plastic shapes against the plastic lid. She'll get there. =)

These have been a pretty big hit, but Keilana already managed to put a small hole in hers, so I need to figure out how to patch it. Perhaps duct tape? (Yeah, I'm classy like that). Her personality is captured fairly well by this photograph.

Kylie was most interested in the Christmas food. She kept stealing other people's candy and popcorn balls. She's quite a sneaky little theif, too.

Santa scored with this one. Easel with paper, markers, paints. Chalkboard on the opposite side. Our house is now full of paintings. So many paintings. This particular drawing is "Mommy and Daddy snowshoeing in the mountains".

And Santa's biggest score of all. When Dylan ripped back the paper and saw what this was, his hands and head started shaking, his eyes got huge and he short of half-yelled-half-shrieked, "Its a Lightning McQueen race track". He's spent half of his life in his room since Christmas morning. He's getting pretty good at it, too. He's better at moderating his pace so that the cars don't fly off the track than I am.

He likes to put things together, too (or at least think he's putting them together), so I think helping Daddy was part of the fun of this present.

Kylie has been carrying around her little music player from Mimi like a personal boom box, and Keilana is all aflutter about her Tinkerbell doll she got from Mimi. Personally, I'm pretty excited about the portable DVD player that Yaya bought the kids this year. That should make the 1300 miles(actually, more like 1500 mile the way we drive it) trips to MT much more pleasant!!