Christmas

The Boot:

A couple nights before Christmas, Kaitlyn's face got a little too close to Abby's boot. They were walking upstairs and Kaitlyn was behind Abby. Kaitlyn didn't even cry out. We didn't know about it until later when she came down and one side of her face was a little puffy.

Speaking of the boot, Abby did get her boot off shortly after Christmas. She has the okay to resume normal activities. Her walking is still stiff and she walks with her foot turned out. Hopefully we can correct that so we don't need to do physical therapy. Here's also crossing our fingers that there are no more broken bones in this family!

Traditions:

The Christmas season goes by way too fast. It seems as if every year I have a goal to have all my shopping done early. This year I was very busy with Primary, lots of Dr. visits, and just being tired. I say it again, like I do every year, next year I want to slow down more. I felt I didn't get to really slow down and enjoy things until the week of Christmas. I did enjoy Christmas and time with my family. It was nice to sleep in, kick back, and just hang out and do whatever we wanted. We did however still do many of our traditions like:

sleeping under the tree,

making gingerbread houses (this year we used leftover Halloween candy I stashed away),

and of course, making cookies. These were the ones we put out for Santa.

I found a cute website that posted these and we had a lot of fun making them.

Christmas Morning:

How cruel were we Christmas morning. The girls were up early, of course, and ran into the front room. Todd was up and shooed the girls into the family room to wait for Mom to get up and we would eat breakfast first. So I was the lucky one and got to sleep in just a little bit Christmas morning. The girls quickly ate breakfast and the opening presents began.

As soon as the M&M's were found in Olivia's stocking, she was done. All she wanted then was to eat - again. She settled on eating her orange that was also in her stocking. She got about halfway through and then started shoving pieces into my mouth. Olivia was very interested in the girls gifts and not too much on hers.

Olivia with food in her hand. This is about the only shot I have of her.

Her big gift was moving up to a toddler bed - hence the pillow in the background.

All Kaitlyn wanted this year was a Jessie doll and Bullseye game which Santa happily brought her. Jessie rarely leaves Kaitlyn's clutches these days. Besides the Bullseye game the girls got Toy Story Mania on the Wii and it's a new favorite. They are constantly playing it. Too bad when school starts because there will be time restrictions put back on video games. Kaitlyn has had this obsession with Toy Story since around October. I have no idea what got into her but it's sticking for quite awhile.

Abby wanted an American girl doll this year. We've been trying not to get into it for a long time now but she's been playing with friends who have dolls and then she wanted one. We went to the store and looked at all the dolls and characters and she settled on a "looks like me" and told Santa exactly what she wanted. The dolls skin looked A LOT lighter in the store! We now have tan, summer time, mini Abby.

Abby's doll even came with the feel better kit so she'd have a matching cast and crutches!

Dresses:

I absolutely love these dresses on the girls. No I did not make them. It seems that any time they wear them I get that question a couple of times. It's a fun red holiday color.

Todd got this awesome tie that Kaitlyn made for him for Christmas. He gets major points for wearing it to church on Sunday.

Fun Stuff:

My younger sister and her family unexpectedly changed their holiday travel plans and ended up here for Christmas. The cousins loved hanging out and getting together. We were able to do lots of fun activities with them while they were here.

One fun outing was going to Main Event and bowl. We wandered over to the arcade and Abby and Kaitlyn played Todd in air hockey. Here they just scored a goal on Dad! Yeah!

Todd and Olivia enjoying the roller coaster ride.

Notice Todd's beard. The girls asked him to grow one so he grew it out for a week and a half until he shaved it off.

This picture was taken at the earlier stages.

It's been a fun week and we are busy playing all the fun new games we got and just enjoying the last bit of family time we have until school and work start back up. We hope you all had a wonderful Christmas too!