Christmas 2009

I'm finally getting caught up on all my pictures from Thanksgiving and Christmas!

This year's Christmas started a little differently. Ryan and I wanted to start a new tradition before the gift opening frenzy began. So we had the girls come to our bed and we read the Christmas story out of Luke. Then we had a family prayer and then ran to the den to open our presents!

The girls started with their stockings. I had to laugh really hard because ever since the first time she saw it on TV, Monica has been asking for "the touching brush" and when she sat on Santa's lap at the mall and told him what she wanted, the "touching brush" was right there on her list! So she was really excited when she pulled it out of her stocking. Santa must have elves who shop the "AS SEEN ON TV" sections of Walmart!

Leah LOVES Spongebob Squarepants. It's the only thing she asks for by name.

So she was pretty stoked to pull a DVD out of her stocking.

These two pictures are another thing I had to laugh at.

Or rather, Ryan had to laugh at.

Every year he tries to trick me into telling him what I got him for his gifts, ever since our first Christmas together when he came out of the bathroom all smug saying, "I know what you got me for Christmas!" He had totally figured out the Craftsman 150-piece tool set. (Honestly, how do you keep something with that many metal pieces from rattling?) So this year Ryan got a movie/entertainment themed gift. The girls gave him "G.I. Joe" and I gave him popcorn and Santa brought him Coke. So whenever he asked me what I got him, I would tell him I got him popcorn or Coke and he never really believed me. So we had to take a picture of him opening his popcorn and Coke! (He also got a year's subscription for online XBOX play if anyone has a hubby that wants to co-op with him...)

Here's another funny. In our nursery at church, Leah LOVES this little hammer toy. So I got her one. Well as soon as she opened it, she didn't want to play with anything else. Ryan would give her unopened gifts and she would push them away. So we finally hid the hammer and shapes when she wasn't looking and then she kept unwrapping. Well, after we were done at our house and went to Nana and Papa's, it turned out that Nana also got a hammer toy! Luckily hers was a wooden one with different colored pegs and Leah was just as enthralled with the wooden one as the plastic one, if not more so!

One of the other things Monica continually asked for was Pixos.

Since she also loves Tinker Bell, she got the Tinker Bell Pixos from Grandma Kathy.

Monica was pretty stoked.

The girls and all their loot! Last Christmas we were sort of, well...broke. So even though the girls were perfectly happy with half as many presents, it still hurt our feelings a little bit that we couldn't give them more. So this year I started early in September because I knew we were going to be pretty broke again, and whenever I saw something I thought one of the girls would like, I would grab it. So little by little we were ready for Christmas and actually felt like we had overdone it just a tad! I have to say I like that feeling a little better than wishing there was more we could do.

I love when you ask a group to smile and get one of these instead! HAHAHA!

No worries, I still love you guys!

But what I love even more is when you ask a group to smile and they try their best to get a good shot in even if your camera is incredibly slow and takes the picture 15 years after you push the button! Thanks Taylors!

So this is worth remembering for years to come. Monica scored some big wants from Nana and Papa this year. The first was an awesome Tinker Bell clubhouse that I'm sure I'll have some pictures to post about later but didn't catch on Christmas. The other was this set of helmet and knee pads! Monica's reaction to the helmet was, in a word, AWESOME! She looked at the helmet and took these really deep, excited breaths and was practically hyperventilating..."It's..it's...it's a..." deep breath, "it's a...(gasping for breath by this time) it's a PRINCESS HELMET!!!!!!"

I think this reaction will be retold over and over because it was stinkin' hilarious!

Me and my mom!

The next day we had another Christmas at Aunty Theresa's.

I thought this pic was so cute of Mikey, Monica and Leah!

Now here's the part where I complain. My pictures, for some reason, are now suddenly not downloading from my camera, even from the same group of pictures. I had some awesome pictures of my aunts and uncles and cousins and now each file is saying "empty". BOO! So I have to play with my camera and hopefully just a setting was changed by a kiddo playing with it and I can get back on track taking pictures. But we had a wonderful Christmas!! Ryan got me a beautiful necklace and a really cool version of David McCullough's 1776. And he got me "Star Trek" with Chris Pine because he knows he is my Hollywood crush. :)