Success

Ah, another beautiful Christmas has passed and here we are on to a new year. To rewind a little, our Christmas Eve was fantastic, as we spent it relaxing during the day (which is something we haven't been doing too much of lately), and we attended our neighbor's party that evening. Everyone had fun, so much fun in fact that the kids passed out in our arms at the party around 8:00 p.m., so we headed home for a good night's sleep. I think it was about 7:30 a.m. Christmas morning before we all emerged from our bedrooms, which is pretty unusual in our house (Zander usually has us up at 6:30 a.m. or so). Before I go much further, I want to post a "before" Christmas morning shot of our house and an "after" shot.

Before:


After:


As you can see, after a little poking and prodding, the kids were successful in opening their presents. When we were coming downstairs from our bedrooms, Charley thought she was going to find Santa waiting for her by the tree. Since she fell asleep at the party the evening prior, we didn't get a chance to go over the whole Santa thing again one more time before she fell asleep . . . so things were a little hazy for her at first. But after realizing that there were a ton of presents to open, she quickly adopted the role of the elf and started handing out everyone's gifts. It took us a very long time to open all the stuff, not only because there were about a million presents (thanks in part to having five sets of grandparents), but also because the kids became very distracted by each gift and had a hard time moving on to the next. Mental note to self for next year: they probably don't need so many presents. So of course I have a million pictures to capture the day, but here are a few of my favorites.

Still in that morning fog . . . but hey look, a new broom!


Can't tear her away from her new book . . . just like her momma


You mean this isn't a real peanut?


Our little princess in her beautiful new shoes


One likes the coon skin cap . . .


And the other doesn't!


The pile is getting smaller . . .


Our future pilot


Winding down


After opening gifts and lounging around in our pj's for way too long, we headed over to Heather and Matt's house for the afternoon, where there was tons of food and tons of friends wandering in and out all day. Everyone had a great time, so I would say we had a pretty darned good Christmas this year. Oh yeah, and it didn't hurt that it was 80 degrees outside.:)