whew!

Well, it was a crazy morning, but we all survived. As usual, Santa got a little carried away and the kids got way more than was originally planned. It is hard to know when to stop when you keep seeing "just one more thing" that the kids have to have.

Grace's big gift this year was a Nintendo DS. She loves it, and now she doesn't have to borrow Garrett's DS. They have already figured out how to wirelessly connect to each other and play games against one another.

Jack's main gift was this John Deere tractor, and you can see that he is quite pleased to have it. Every time we were at Wal-Mart and we passed the toy aisle he reminded us how much he wanted this tractor.

And Garrett's main gift was an electric scooter. He didn't know he wanted it, but he can't get enough of it now. It is a little frightening to me to watch him cruising around on it, but he just loves it. I even got on it a couple of times, it is really fun.

The aftermath of too much Christmas joy! Thanks to all our family and friends who helped to make this a magical Christmas for all the kids!

It's a good thing Monday is garbage day!

Merry Christmas!

Source

decorating a gingerbread neighborhood

Our little gingerbread neighborhood!

Grace's house, I love what she's done with her yard!

Garrett did a lot of work on the Christmas lights for his house!

Jack helped me with the A-frame and the cute little mod house. He was really more interested in squeezing the frosting straight into his mouth and topping it off with candy!

I bought a kit at Wal-Mart that included everything. It was the perfect thing because everyone got to decorate their own little house. Miraculously there was very little arguing for the 15 minutes or so that it took to decorate. A Christmas miracle!

I love how the kids have such looks of concentration in every picture. It couldn't get one where they were smiling. They wanted every detail to be perfect!

deck the halls

We added a couple of blow up decorations this year and the kids just love them. It seems like nearly every house in our neighborhood has at least one of them in their yard. It is so hard to get a good picture of the lights in the dark. It looks a lot brighter and fun in person. I would say we have successfully decked our halls for 2010!

and grace too!

Grace wanted to wait until Friday to wear her new clothes so she could wear them on her birthday to school. Never mind the green socks, she dresses herself most of the time!

jack's new clothes

Aunt Maggie always gets the kids a cute new outfit for their birthday! We love it!