Christmas Day

Insert helicopter noises here. Building toys were the tops for
m this year. Shown are K'nex, which integrate with his legos. Even as I write he's playing with his legos. Hooray! We've hit the easy gift years.

A little Texas greeting!

V actually wasn't sure how to unwrap her first present, but she quickly figured it out.

There's real sunshine in this shot! V's putting her baby doll down for a nap. She took multiple 30 second naps under her very special V blanket.

Christmas Eve

Here are a couple of fun pictures from Christmas Eve. We had a few friends over and a semi-traditional dinner (the pies were traditional, at least!) It was so lovely to have some real Christmas spirit in our home, especially when we sang carols for a while. Remarkably, the kids played happily downstairs while we sang upstairs, so we got to run through quite a few favorites before our voices wore out. (Thanks, Mark, for hanging out with the kids!) I miss my favorite carols, so it was a treat to sing so many.

We've never done this before, but since the kids needed new jammies anyway, we wrapped up a new set for each of them and let them open them before bedtime. I know lots of families love to do this; we'll have to decide whether to add it as a tradition or not. They were definitely excited to open one gift the night before! And it's really cute to have the kids in matching PJs. We told them to put their heads together and look cute. This was the result.

We also acted out the Christmas story -- it was a bit random, but lots of fun. We had one friend film it for us; I'll have to check out the footage soon. When I was in about the second verse of the story, the wise man (M) yelled out, "I have to go potty!" But this hilarious feat was probably beat by the V and V show -- our V and our friend, who is the same age, but smaller, acted as Joseph and the donkey. (Another mom played Mary.) Our V was sad that we let another girl wear the purple angel wings, but finally cheered up and announced that she would play the donkey. Her buddy wanted to ride on her, which she was fine with (?!?) He kind of straddled his legs around her back and walked along with her, so in our version Joseph got a ride and poor Mary walked the whole way. On her knees. Christmas morning pics to come soon.

Darkwing Duck

Do you remember Darkwing Duck? My kids love watching it (on youtube, our favorite place). It's fun for the big people too, because the writing is pretty darn clever. If you don't recall, Darkwing shows up on the scene and delivers this line "I am the terror that flaps in the night ..." followed by something different every time. My favorite?

DW Duck: I am the terror that flaps in the night. I am the batteries that are not included.

I've just been checking online to make sure we have the correct batteries for one of M's presents. Naomi and I were wrapping presents the other night when someone realized we didn't know what batteries the toys needed. Oops! Luckily, we've got it covered.

Nomie's hopefully made it home by now. We had a great time!! Everything was good, except that Aunt Naomi was the first to fall on our slippery stairs. This experience brought us the best quote from the trip:

V: My bum's poopy. Your bum's sore.

Merry Christmas

comparison pictures

Baby M

Baby V

Baby E. The ages don't match exactly, but I think you can tell that little E will look just like that V picture in a couple of weeks! No wonder Nathan keeps calling the baby by the wrong name!! I was also surprised to see how much hair M had. I had forgotten. Some funny facts -- E's hairline is just like V's (and Nathan's), so she'll have a cowlick on the same side, etc. All three kids have one funny curving toe, just like me.

update

M's school term ends on Friday, so we're in the middle of end-of-term activities. Although I feel bad that the baby has precluded me from donating time to the school, there is a certain ease in knowing that no one expects me to do anything. So far, the parents have hosted a bake sale, decorated the school secretly, served cookies and cocoa while the kids decorated, and prepared Santa's grotto. (Our big kids visited Santa last week on St. Mikulas day. M's comment: He was real.) This week, we have an evening nativity performance, a special Christmas lunch (served by parents), and a class party. Parents also sort the school mail every day. Kids get to post letters to friends at the school during the Christmas season. M spent 2-3 afternoons making Christmas cards, labelling envelopes, signing his name, etc. It takes a long time!! But he was really excited about it. Anyway, I confess that I find the activities a bit much! Less is more and all that ...

V has big news this week: she's learning to read! She's been very excited about learning letter sounds the past few weeks, which is great, because we use M's homework to practice her skills. It makes her so happy to be involved. And a couple of days ago, she was sounding out on Starfall.com and then read the word all by herself! (b-a-g bag!) She's done it a couple of times since, and it shocks me every time. It is so adorable to see how proud she is of herself. I know she can tell that I'm genuinely surprised at how clever she is, and she just glows.

M's big news this week: he had the last meeting of his Saturday morning football (soccer) club, and they gave out awards and goodies. He was so excited about his trophy that he didn't even want to have lunch at McDonald's on the way home -- he had to show Mommy right away. (Daddy takes him to football club.) The trophy has since been in various pockets, in M's bed, at church, in the car ... anywhere M goes, the trophy goes. I don't know what we'll do when the little plastic trophy breaks!

E doesn't have any huge news, although she did sleep longer than normal last night, which is really great. We have an appointment to get her birth record and passport papers filed tomorrow. The only tricky part is getting her passport photo -- we'll try to get it before the appointment, and just hope that I can get her to open her eyes ... I'm beginning to wish I'd gotten extra copies of V's baby passport pics -- I'm sure no one would be able to tell the difference. (Just kidding!!)