Christmas Dinner

Christmas Morning!

From the top:
1. Alison's been obsessed with pineapples, so Santa brought her one. She was VERY happy. (Even though she doesn't like eating them.)
2. Kristen got a bike. She was convinced that Santa was going to bring one, so she dashed out to the garage first thing, missing the bike that was in the living room. She was very happy when she came back in and saw it.
3. I told Caitlyn, when she was complaining that she had no place to wear her bowler hat, that she should wear it Christmas morning. So she did.
4. Megan with her "College student" haul.
5. Russell and Kristen, enjoying a quiet moment.
6. Megan and her friend Kylie painted some fangirl art for Alison for Christmas. Alison was extremely happy.
7. Caitlyn decided to write one reason she loves us for every single day of the year. But, she got to May 22 and realized she'd used up a whole roll of paper, so she stopped. Even so, it was a fantastic present.
8. Megan got a KU sweatshirt without the silly jaybird logo. She was very happy.
9. And I needed to throw one of me on there. :-)

It was a good Christmas!

In the Days Before Christmas

1. We were Goofy.

They are very silly girls.

2. Kristen built a train.

It went all the way around the tree. She was very proud of herself.

3. Made Rosettes

We waited until Megan came home to do those. She was very happy.

4. Made Cookies

We had the Chavez girls over to play that day, so they helped make the cookies. It was a ton of fun.

At the Nutcracker

We didn't take the camera, but I had my phone on me, and Kristen thought we should snap a couple of pictures at intermission.

We had a good time!

In Case You Didn't See it on Book Nut

Here's our Christmas Eve picture.

Happy Christmas!

Story Night 2014

We had story night this past week. Unlike past years, we couldn't find anyone to share the night with us, so it was just us. Which, actually, was kind of nice. We could read longer stories, and there wasn't the usual din surrounding the storytelling.

We all picked our favorite stories:

Caitlyn chose The Grinch Who Stole Christmas, and we realized that she's been doing the same story since she started participating in 2004. In fact, we have proof:

It's actually rather cool. And we decided it wouldn't be Christmas without Caitlyn performing the Grinch.

Christmas Nativity Play 2014

Since Megan and Caitlyn were gone, I thought about not doing the puppet play this year. But, Kristen insisted they were NOT too old. So, we roped a couple of very willing sister missionaries into helping out this year.

Time to Decorate the Tree

At some point, this Christmas, we realized that we've reached a crossroads. Megan's off to college, Caitlyn's super busy with her play, and that leaves Alison and Kristen to handle pretty much of our standard traditions. One of those, of course, was decorating the tree.

It happened on a Monday early evening, kind of around dinner (which also didn't really happen that night, either). And we kind of half-heartedly sorted the ornaments

and there was a bit of squabbling, but the ornaments actually did end up on the tree.

And it was mostly done. We did save a box for Caitlyn to put up when she got home late, and she decided she needed proof she helped, so she took a selfie.

And we have a tree. Maybe some traditions aren't quite all the way dead yet.

Botanica Illuminations 2014

We've bee going to this pretty regularly for the past five years (I counted), and while we've seen crowds, and gone when it's cold, we've never seen it as packed as it was this year. A warmish night, the opening weekend, and you've got a packed Botanica. So, we didn't do some of the things we have in the past, but we still went and had a good time.

We took lots of photos, anyway. That's what really counts.

Waiting in line:

 Me: "Alison, why do you photo bomb?" Alison: "It's fun! And I don't like regular pictures of me."

See?

More photobombing...

And all the pretty lights:

The coolest thing was this:



I'm not sure if you can tell -- we could barely see it; it would have been better had we been looking down on it -- but they managed to program a huge grid of lights to work like a TV. It was pretty impressive.

I'm always glad when we go.

The Rest of Christmas

It's not very often we get a white Christmas here. The last one I remember was 4 years ago. So, we need to take advantage of it when we do.

Also: the game Wayne and Rebecca got us was called Pandemic. Think Contagion in board form. We've had a lot of fun attempting to play it, even though we haven't been able to "win" yet.

We all ate too much chocolate and lots of yummy other food. It was a good day.

Christmas Morning 2013

Our Christmas Morning:

Why yes, I was happy at getting a minion from Alison and Kristen! 

The tag on the present Caitlyn gave us. It "featured" Megan, which means that Caitlyn nagged her until she did what Caitlyn wanted. It turned out to be two very lovely letters.

We got socks in our stockings. Cracks me up.

The only picture I didn't get was of the Skype chat we had with Megan. To be honest, I didn't even think about it until everyone stated posting pictures of their Skype chats with their missionaries. *facepalm* Oh, well. We did talk to her, and enjoyed that very much. I love technology.

It was a great morning.