Merry Christmas!!

Santa was so, so good to us this year! Dylan said his new toys all smelled like Santa. Brooklyn found some wetness on Christmas paper and was absolutely sure it was elf drool. She said several times “Santa WAS listening!” as she received things she asked him for. Cora refused to eat Santa’s leftover cookies for fear his magical saliva may be on it. Brooklyn and Dylan could care less and gobbled them up.

The girls got a new tablet and Osmo learning system which combines hand held items with a mirrored, interactive teaching program. It teaches vocabulary, math, science and coding, and also how to draw. It is absolutely an incredible gift to our homeschool and the kids absolutely love the little animations when they have solved a puzzle or answered correctly.

Santa cracked us all up with this porta potty truck!

Santa also brought us a full, weighted key keyboard piano. We are looking forward to teaching the kids to read music and play.

Santa brought Dylan a Teddy Ruxpin. He has LCD eyes with a large array of expressions and links via Bluetooth to an large collection of books. Adam also bought me a new phone to replace the one I horrifically fumbled into the toilet a few weeks ago.

Christmas afternoon, after the chaos we went to Grandma and Grandpa’s. We swam, ate a gorgeous meal together, opened gifts, and went for a golf cart ride around the community’s elaborate Christmas decorations. The kids made two artistic masterpieces and Brooklyn spent nearly a week making a button necklace for Grandma to match her button bracelet. Grandma and Grandpa gave the kids sweatshirts, an awesome kick ball, and binoculars.

Beautiful prayers and many sweet toasts were made before the meal. Cora said the sweetest prayer about love and family. Dylan snook peices of food while the rest of the family folded hands.

This is the artwork the kids and I made Grandma and Grandpa.

We planned on staying one night, but ended up staying two nights because Grandma and Grandpa took the girls to see Frozen 2, we made a gingerbread house together, and lounged an excessive amount of time in the hot tub. Spending the night and having that quiet down time in the late evening and early morning has a lot of value.

Our gingerbread house may have turned out a little lop sided, but it tasted delicious! It nearly killed the kids when we told them it was for decoration only; luckily us grown ups came to our senses!