Christmas

Where do I begin? We left for our vacation in the middle of the day on Christmas!!!!! That is not something I like to do, but for the sake of travel time and giving the girls a full vacation we made the right decision.

RaRa and PopPop came over on Christmas eve and we enjoyed a joint holiday appetizer party at Rob's aunt's house. It has been awhile since the two families have joined and it was nice. Not something I am ready to do every holiday but it was nice to have my Mom and Michael join us. I think they had fun too. Emma and Julia were adorable that night, playing with their big "cousins". Basically we realized that neither of the girls are too boy shy ... unfortunately! They ate it up having all of the attention from the teenage boys. At one point Emma told Rob, "Daddy, go ... enjoy the party" as she scooted him out of the den doorway he had been peering into to check in on them. UH OH, we are definitely in trouble! After the party we let the girls stay up a bit later than usual and we took a ride across town to see a great Holiday spectacular that this one house has going on. They have over 30,000 lights on their house/lawn and they have it all set to music and you tune into a radio station in your car ... it's really neat: http://www.youtube.com/user/QuietCornerChristmas#p/a/u/2/GKSWy7E-89E

We had a blast watching it! And then it was bed time for the little cherubs, there were absolutely no peeps from either child because they both knew the faster they went to sleep the faster Santa would arrive with special gifts for them. And then the elves went to work and prepared all of the special toys ~ a gigantic doll house for them to share (note to all -- read measurements before buying online, I did not and now this thing takes up 1/3 of the playroom!), Baby Alive for Julia, Magical Ariel for Emma, Crayola Activity Centers, Lincoln Logs, a ZhuZhu pet, and stockings filled to the brim with snacks and treats for the ride to Florida. But the biggest surprise Santa brought -- an Ariel Big Wheels for Julia -- well actually it was supposed to be from Auntie A and Uncle Timmy but it took over an hour to assemble and at 12 midnight we no longer had the gusto to wrap it, so it was placed in the Santa pile!!! Um, I think I will have to delete this post before the girls start to read ;) Anyway, who knew that this was going to be THE gift ... well RaRa did ... she said many times ... "do you think you should put Julia's name on it" ... Emma is really going to want that. I said "Santa doesn't write tags or wrap ... not this year at least". Well first thing Emma saw was the Ariel bike and was enamoured, but we quickly acknowledged that Santa had gotten this special gift for the girls to share ... and so far that is just what they are doing. Julia is obsessed with it, all of our vacation she asked for her "biiiiike", very cute.

We adults were also VERY spoiled ... it's hard to summarize because we were given so very much. Our family has always been good at giving just the perfect gifts with just the right amount of love. I love Christmas ... I love that my Mom, Michael, my Sister and her boyfriend all want to be here with us and we want to be with them ... hanging out in our Crazy Christmas Pajamas ... yup we had April change as soon as she stepped through the door ... and even when Rob's parents arrived for French Toast Casserole, Quiche, and coffee we all stayed in those Crazy PJ's! :) It was wonderful.

Whew, this post was supposed to be about Disney ... but I needed to share how wonderful Christmas was ...