Christmas Morning (OR...After opening gifts, why do I even bother making a nice breakfast?)

Pre-opening:

Mid-opening:

Post-opening: (Chaos Tower...more to come later this week...)

Duel-action light saber, the wrong color...oops, Santa (or Target, why did you only have one color in stock?)...

Scooter (Isaac: "This scooter is so much better than all my friends' scooters. It doesn't go 'bumpity bump' like theirs do. Mom: "That's because you're riding it on the carpet and the carpet isn't uneven like the sidewalk outside." Isaac, with crestfallen expression: "Oh.")

Webkins dragon. Yeah, I thought it was pretty pathetic, too, but we got an earload the rest of the day on all sorts of "Lava Dragon" facts and details...oh my goodness...I think Laura liked her other gifts, too, but I couldn't be sure, there was so much dragon mumbo jumbo.

Okay, Santa scored big with this one. Noelle played with this ALL day (like ten hours), and the next morning woke up and came into my bedroom (like she always does every morning to say "I'm hungry" or "I'm thirsty" or "I'm poopy") and she said..."I like my castle."

I admit Laura liked the books she received. (Did I mention they were books about dragons?)

***Here's an important announcement.***

I'm starting a new Christmas Eve tradition in our house: FASTING ALL DAY.

Because I am SICK of working for hours in the kitchen creating lovely glutinous food I CANNOT EAT, so that my family can have a special Christmas breakfast, the kind that I loved when I was a kid and came to associate and differentiate Christmas morning from all the other mornings...(ranting here)...obviously they don't appreciate it and would rather have cold cereal, or better yet, the PRINGLES they got in their stockings! Whatever!!! I made one of my favorites from my own childhood, apple fritters, and it took some work, I tell you, and it made me SAD I couldn't have any, but my kids just did not care...and now there are lots and lots of leftovers that only Steve will eat...and don't they still look pretty the day after?

Steve did make a turkey for me that I could eat. And he also spent hours on this puzzle for all of us to enjoy. And we did lounge about the rest of the day in our pajamas, reading and napping and eating chocolate and eventually turkey, so that by the afternoon, I was enjoying Christmas like everyone else.

So it's all good. But next year we're having Lucky Charms, bacon (for me), and Pringles for breakfast.

Christmas Eve...Day of cookies.

Here's a picture taken Christmas Eve morning from the top of the stairs. Aw...look. It's all clean and peaceful. That's all about to change in about four hours.
(But first a little pre-Christmas-day-six-year-old excitement.)

Okay, back to the cookies...it's all about the cookies...

After many hours of mixing, chilling, rolling, and baking, the real work begins:

And you thought those cookie cutters were for bells, when all along they were meant to be"Darth Vaders":

And the mess begins...(Just kidding. It began WAY before this step.)

Lincoln about to chomp. (Picture by Noelle.)

There are no pictures of the destruction in the kitchen. Or the crumbs embedded in the carpet. Or (grudgingly) the fabulous gingerbready smell that makes it all worth it.

What is your biggest Christmas Eve tradition?

Winter stuff

Every year the oral surgery department has Santa visit their private practice office in North Liberty. You can't tell from the picture, but Noelle LOVED Santa. She told him all about Cinderella's hair and lips and shoes and dress. It was quite the conversation.

Laura was forced into the photos against her will (though she looks smiley enough here). Apparently she is too old to be photographed with Santa this year. Someone might think she still believes in him.

Here I am wearing the sweats I wore the day before, slept in, and then wore to this function. (TMI?) Anyway, this was the first year it dawned on me that most of the other residents and their families dress up to get their picture taken with Santa. Not us, though. However, I was comfy.

The kids scoping out the loot Santa gave them:

After lunch we headed to the park for some sledding. The walk was not as long as Laura makes it look.

Within about a half hour, Noelle felt like this:

And Isaac decided to try another hill "because this hill kept getting snow in his face" only to return ten minutes later pouting, colapsing on the ground, and plugging his ears whenever we tried to persuade him to join in the fun.

So I decided to go back home with the party poopers. Which I enjoyed. If anyone knows me, I am the queen of the party poopers, especially in the winter. In fact, the highlight of the experience was realizing that I have taught these two something very important, (and I know this wisdom has sunk deep into their hearts because Noelle just repeated it not five minutes ago, an entire week later, as she was looking out the window). They have learned this:

Snow is yucky!

Yes it is, little wise ones! But there's always hot chocolate and cookies waiting at home to help you forget the evil cold stuff.

"I'll be three on my princess birthday..."

Now she can start mastering other sentences, like "I want a pony."

Thanks, Goodsons, for providing the other birthday girl. You'll have to fly Bethany out every December 7th in the future so that Noelle's parties won't be lame.

All Princess, All the Time.

As part of Noelle's birthday celebration--her birthday is on the 7th--we decided to go to see Disney's Princesses on Ice with our neighbors, the Goodsons, whose daughter shares the same birthday as Noelle (and passion for princesses, too).

The morning of the show (probably about 6:30 AM), all the girls in the family were singing Disney songs to set the mood. It annoyed Lincoln so much that he prayed at breakfast that "everyone would stop singing princess songs". Immediately I decided it was a good time to teach him sometimes your prayers don't get answered just the way you want them to:

Here we are at the stadium, waiting for the show to begin. (Also, most of these pictures were taken by my friend Heidi because her camera is awesome and mine is not. But she ran out of batteries before the show ended. Bet you'll be able to guess when her pictures end and mine start!)

Noelle and Bethany walking into the stadium. Noelle was completely overwhelmed:

Noelle, as the show is beginning:

Tinkerbell:
Aladin:

Aladin and Jasmine on the flying carpet:
Sleeping Beauty:

Aurora in a trance:

Under the sea:
Sebastian:
Ariel and Ursula:
Snow White and the Seven Dwarves:
Beauty and the Beast:
The totally amazing castle set:
Belle and the beast transformed:
All the "princesses" dancing with their "princes":
After the intermission, the rest of the show was spent retelling the Cinderella story, which we loved because Cinderella is Noelle's favorite princess:

The coach and horses:
At the ball:
Cinderella and the Prince dancing, Noelle's favoritist, favoritist part:
During which, she made her Cinderella doll dance in the air along with them:
At the end, when they had all the princesses come out in white dresses:

Yeah, this looked much cooler in real life. If you enlarge it, you can probably find Cinderella in white, ready to dance with the Prince.

Some cool pyrotechnics:
Noelle waving goodbye to all the princesses at the end as they skated away: Maybe I'm just a sucker for the Disney cash machine, but, darn it all, it was a completely magical evening, and not just for the three-year-old!