Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas 2010! This year was Bree's first Christmas and Santa remembered! Good thing he did cuz mommy totally forgot till after Thanksgiving and her stocking wasn't made yet. Thankfully Aunt Stacy was able to whip one out in time. I believe Bree had a great time. She is almost 11 months old so she was a bit more aware of what was going on than her siblings were on their first Christmas. A couple of days before Christmas Paul gave me an early gift. A new camera! Its a Sony a33 for anyone who knows anything about cameras. Supposedly it can make even me look like a good photographer. Well, maybe after I get used to it and figure it out a little better. The pictures we took at Christmas with it aren't the best ever but we can see faces so I guess that is good enough. Christmas Eve we acted out the Nativity scene with the Little People set while Paul read the story out of the scriptures. Bree liked the donkey the best. By 8 o'clock the kids were begging to go to bed. They had been bouncing off the walls all day and I was more than ready to get rid of them! Even Bree could feel the electricity in the air and was a bit more out of control than usual. By 9am I was through, I don't know how we survived the day.

We woke up to presents overflowing beyond the tree. The kids must have been good this year? Mason was up at 5:45, waking everyone else up but mean old daddy made them stay upstairs till 6. Its a wonder they didn't all pee their pants in the 15 minutes of anticipation! Bree was less than thrilled to be awake at such an early hour, instead of her usual 8:30 wake-up. She fell asleep in her high chair while eating breakfast, poor baby.

Mason scored with a robot from Santa. He's pretty fun, though I'm not sure I appreciate his sarcastic comments and voice on top of everyone else who lives in the house.

Bree got stacking blocks from Santa. What the heck is Santa supposed to bring the 4th kid? We already have everything!

Darcy ended up with 2 pillow pets and a little dog house full of stuffed puppies. We have been overrun with stuffed animals! Darce got a Sit n' Spin from Santa and I am happy to report no one has thrown up yet because of it!

Drew got a hippo pillow pet (surprise, surprise!) and a big Lego set which has kept her occupied for hours already. She and Mason have become best buddies while putting it all together. Had I known that was all it would take to encourage them to get along I would have invested in them a loooooong time ago. We also got the new Kinect for our Xbox and the kids have had fun jumping all over the house playing it.

After we opened our gifts we high-tailed it to my parent's house where we met up with all but one of my siblings and their families. I just accidentally deleted a picture of it! We had dinner and opened more gifts and played with the 16 cousins all there. We stayed in our trailer in my parent's back yard, where I got absolutely no sleep but that was to be expected. On the 26th we woke up and drove 2 hours north to spend the day with Paul's side of the family at his sister's house.

This is Carmen's beautiful tree with a bunch of us just relaxing while a bunch of others were in the kitchen making us dinner! Thanks guys!

The kids enjoyed their spaghetti with the special sauce Aunt Carmen made for them without the meat and peppers and anything else other than tomatoes in it. Thanks Aunt Carmen, you really shouldn't have ;) After dinner we opened still more gifts and then headed home so Paul could get to work Monday morning. He had the entire week off leading up to Christmas and we miss him hanging out with us now!

Today is now the 28th of December and my decorations are still up. Usually I have them down as soon as I walk in the door from wherever we had been for Christmas. I don't know if that means I am mellowing and losing some of my scrooginess in my old age, or if I am just being lazy. I figure it will get done eventually. Bree has been pretty good about staying out of the tree so I am in no rush. I hope everyone else had as good a Christmas as we did, full of family food and presents!

Happy Thanksgiving!

My baby is 10 month old! I don't know where the time went. She is pulling up to standing and even letting go for a few seconds at a time. She sprouted 4 teeth within a week of each other and now she has a gorgeous toothy grin! She is such a sweetheart and she likes to give me juicy, long, kisses. Oh how I love my Breezy!

I loaded the pictures backwards so we will start with the Christmas tree. I was thinking we would wait till Saturday the 4th to get the tree, since I didn't know how Bree would react to it and I didn't want to spend an extra week trying to keep her out of it, but we realized that the Civil War football game is on the 4th at 12:30 and there is no way we would miss it just to get a tree, so we cut one down on our way home from our Thanksgiving vacation. Bree has torn a couple bows off of presants and likes to touch the lights but damage has been surprisingly minimal.

Although it was extremely tough, I mostly let the kids hang up the ornaments. I usually take the lead but I let them this year. It turned out nice and there weren't even any clumps of ornaments anywhere. (which I would have corrected after they went to bed if there were any!)

Our first snow of the season happened before Thanksgiving. Unheard of around here! There was enough to throw at siblings and freeze little fingers, but not for much else. Hopefully we will get a good snow event this year, but please nothing like 2008!

Drew is my little angel ;)

Bree and Grandma were visiting over Thanksgiving break. She is still OK visiting with "strangers." We'll see how long that will last.

Miss Breezy ate Thanksgiving dinner on my lap and at one point she had stolen my spoon and was downing the mashed potatoes all on her own. I forget that she is able to do lots of things for herself now. I think I might be trying too hard to keep her a baby as long as I can.

This is a motley crew! We were originally sceduled to eat dinner with Paul's family but plans were changed and we ended up at my parents' house with a million cousins. This is the "medium" aged table. There are a few older cousins and a few younger now.

Darcy had a great feast, when she decided to pull her hands off her face and join the party. She was in the throes of stranger anxiety full force. Crazy girl.

On a beautiful fall day we raked and played in the leaves. Let me correct that. I raked, and they played. Darcy's hair matched the beautiful colors of the leaves.

So now we are looking forward to the Beavers beating the Ducks in the Civil War game and ruining their chances of a National Championship. I mean we are looking forward to CHRISTMAS! The shopping is done, most of the gifts are wrapped, and now we can start making lots of tasty treats!