Merry Christmas!

Hope you all had a great Christmas! We sure did. This year has been really fun, since it's the first time the girls have really understood the whole concept of Santa, and they got really excited as we counted down the days until he arrived! As promised (to Aunt Heidi), here is a boat load of pictures and video. Hope it isn't too much.

We got our Christmas tree the Saturday after Thanksgiving.
The girls were pretty excited about it...

...except Olivia. She though it was so boring, she fell asleep.
(But don't you just love her little bear outfit?)Maggie thought it looked like fun to be a tree...
Lilly was a great supervisor as we set it up.
She took all the credit for the hard work.
We open one present on the 12th day before Christmas.
The girls got the new Fancy Nancy Splendiferous Christmas book this year.
They liked it so much, they would read it first thing in the morning.

Here we are at our church Christmas party. Santa came, and this is the first year that Lilly and Maggie were brave enough to go see him, but neither sat on his lap. I tried to prep them for the big, "What do you want for Christmas?" question. Lilly kept saying things like, "Presents." Yeah, but what do you want in the present? "A present." Okay. What kind of present? "A green one." After several fruitless efforts, we finally decided that "A candy cane" was an acceptable response. And, sure enough, Santa came prepared with a candy cane for each munchkin. Way to go, big guy.

A little nervous, but still being brave. She went up there, but sat on Mommy's lap instead of Santa's.

That wasn't so bad. AND I got candy to boot.

Olivia's pictures tell her story, so I'll just let them do the talking...
To get ready for Christmas, we did a few fun things. A good friend inspired me to make gingerbread houses with the girls. They thought it was the greatest thing in the whole world. (How could it NOT be, when mom hands you huge amounts of candy and encourages you to decorate a sugar coated house you get to eat later?!)


We received Christmas packages in the mail almost daily. The number of presents under the tree just kept going and going....

Here is Lilly telling Grandma on the phone about each and every one of them.
We also have a tradition of opening a present on Christmas Eve.
Usually everyone gets new pajamas.

Olivia got to open two presents: PJs and a Jumperoo!
(We got it when Lilly was a baby, and it was still at Grandma's house.
A big THANKS to Uncle Brady for packaging it up and shipping it to us!)
She's a natural.


We got spoiled this year. Here's the tree on Christmas morning. All the red presents on the left are from Santa. The rest are from family and friends.

(Don't worry. One of my projects for 2010 is to make matching stockings for everyone.
Lilly's is the only stocking that will make it in the lineup.)
James surprised me with an iPod nano, as well as the exercise machines pictured above.
All I have to say is, "Yay for craigslist!"
The girls got lots and lots of doll house accessories. Maggie was especially excited about them. After opening the twin babies, she noticed they were the same size as the Buzz Lightyear keychain she got in her stocking and, therefore, MUST be in the same family. She carried them everywhere, and we had to keep reminding her that there were more presents to open, to which she would reply, "Oh! Yeah..."Olivia surprised us all when she decided she wanted to stand up! She's growing up way too fast!
Like I said before, we all got spoiled. I mean, HOLY COW! JUST LOOK AT ALL THAT STUFF!