Merry Christmas!

Oh, how I love Christmas! Everything about it - the feeling, the smells, the music, the anticipation and excitement, the surprises, the lights, the decorations - you get the idea. It is especially wonderful to spend Christmas with children. The pure joy and giggles and laughter are music to my ears. How I wish this season could last all year round!

We had a great Christmas! Kayla came running into our bedroom with wide eyes and giddy with excitement (I was actually the first one up and was trying to make myself look somewhat presentable for pictures and video of Christmas morning.) "Mom, guess what? THERE'S A GIANT DOLLHOUSE IN THE LIVING ROOM!" Priceless! If only I had the video camera with me at that point.

In our family (actually Alan's family) we do Christmas boxes instead of stockings. Santa brings unwrapped gifts and puts them in our boxes. Usually Santa brings books, movies, candy, fruit, small toys and little trinket toys. Santa also brings one big gift for the girls to share (like a giant dollhouse) and then Santa also leaves a family gift (sometimes big, sometimes small). After we checked out our goods from Santa we got dressed and met my family for Christmas breakfast at IHOP. It's tradition. We do it every year. No matter how many times I try to break tradition we always have breakfast together at IHOP. We came home from breakfast at IHOP and put the girls down for a nap. I even got a little shut eye. (Santa and his elves were up 'til 2:00 a.m. putting a dollhouse together.) After naps we finally gathered 'round the Christmas tree to open presents. Again, pure joy! After we finished opening gifts I figured it was probably time to start making dinner. I didn't calculate how much time I needed before I started the process so we ended up having a late dinner. It was no big deal really since I was still really full from breakfast at IHOP but my kids were exhausted from a full day of fun.

Here's a picture of our Christmas boxes. In Alan's family they used cardboard boxes of whatever they could find. Of course, I want the boxes to be pretty and I tried to decorate some plastic boxes that I had. It didn't work out so I ended up lining the boxes with tissue paper. Next year I want to make fabric boxes. Can someone show me how to do that?

We are just about to dig into our boxes.

Happiness!

Ashlyn got a purse with fake lipstick, make-up, keys and a cellphone. Kayla got dress-up shoes (we call them clickity-clack shoes). Ashlyn wore the shoes all day long and strutted around with her purse. Too cute!

Ashlyn is dressed up in her chef outfit making "pies".

Our sad attempt at making a gingerbread house. I think we will wait a few more years before we try this again. I was actually encouraging the girls to eat as much candy as they wanted so we didn't have to try to put it all on the house. It was really a hard project for me.