Our Merry Christmas

The girls sliding down AJ's new skate ramp.

AJ wore his new rollerblades (my old ones) all day - even to do his chores. He can already do more in a few minutes riding around the kitchen table than I could ever do. He's just figuring it out on his own, but the constant round and round the table started wearing on me by the evening and making me dizzy.


Sarah taking her new toy puppy from Aaron and Kelsey for a ride in her new doll stroller (yay! no more fighting over Rachel's!!!!) on AJ's new skate ramp.



Matthew finally has his own air soft gun. AJ was saying that he gave the most presents (he shopped at the school store where nothing was over $2). Sorry AJ- but there's 10,000 bbs in there. :) How fitting that Grandma and Grandpa sent targets. The boys went upstairs and played air soft guns first after all was picked up and chores done. A high school neighbor boy babysits Matthew's best friend and they came over several times for air soft wars this fall, but Matthew was the only one that didn't have a gun. Now he's on equal standing with the rest.

Sam got a drill and bit set. He's so excited, he immediately went to work making a spindle to hold the recordable CDs Richard got. He checked out each and every tip and asked for projects to get started on...I suggested I'm still wanting a bookshelf upstairs and I need my garden boxes built before spring so they'll be ready when I need them.

I did well holding back on the expenditures and got one good gift for each of the kids and they were totally happy and thanked me and glowed all day long over their new gifts. I was proud of the kids too that they weren't greedy at all, in fact, I think they would have been happy with even just the stockings. They weren't in any hurry to get everything open and were happy with everything they got...no complaining or fighting the whole morning... it was so nice!

Some Christmas morning funnies:

AJ gave Rachel and Sarah a Christmas mug. Rachel eager to use it and her hot cocoa from her stocking asked, "When I can get it dirty?!"

Matthew gave Rachel a big train puzzle and a number puzzle to Sarah. Sarah was playing with Rachel's and then decided to try and take Rachel's pieces and put them in her puzzle. A puzzle piece is a puzzle piece, right?

Matthew was sorting out his new deck of cards and exclaimed, "Mom they forgot to give us the elevens!"

Well it's wait late and the other set of pictures doesn't seem to be loading. Maybe I'll get back to it tomorrow to add more.

The girls got tu-tus and some old costume jewelry from a thrift store so they can play dress-up.

Tha ham finished over an hour before expected so I hadn't even started the potatoes or rolls. I played Catan with everyone while doing dishes, laundry (Rachel wet our bed), making potatoes, and rolls.