Christmas Excitement

This is the first year that the kids have both really grasped the concept of Christmas.... and by grasped I mean that if you ask either child what Christmas is about, they will mechanically respond, "ItwasthedayJesuswasborn". All. one.word. The presents make a little more sense in their young concrete minds... Here are pictures of the kids "excited-cause-it's-Christmas-eve-so Santa-is-coming-to-bring-presents" faces. Ava obviously feels very intensely about the arrival of Santa and those long awaited presents!
Eli is happy because I let him lick all the frosting off his cookie without giving him a hard time!
Each one picked out the cookie they thought Santa would like best, sprinkled "magic" reindeer dust on the front walk, and Ava spent a good amount of time leaving this for Santa...
And,um, Santa really enjoyed those Cooces too!
Doesn't it all look so pretty? I can tell you it only took the kids about 4.2 seconds to turn the living room into a swimming pool of wrapping paper, bows, gifts, and debris from the Great Lionel Train "crash" of '08. Amazingly no presents were harmed in the frenzy!
"Can we Puh-Lease come down yet???!!!" (Eli wakes up a little rough doesn't he?)
One of the kids' gifts was steering wheels and a racing game for their wii... in my often delusional tired Mommy state, I thought they could take some of their arguments to the race track... um, yeah...
While I was in Prague, I had picked up some little garnet earrings for Ava.
The kids always love books, and the grandparents sent books about dinosaurs (with puzzles included!) the kids were in heaven! Some other favorites were: Ava's fairy princess game for Wii (a video game involving dressing up a doll and helping her pick flowers... she's addicted of course!), Eli's weasel ball (the most annoying toy ever and the battery never, ever dies!), their fleece pants, Ava's slinky (that she found one too many inappropriate uses for... leading to demise of poor slinky), Don't break the ice (which Ava is scarily good at!), and their digital cameras.
Eli contemplates the possibilities of having his own camera... better watch out Ava... little brothers have been known to blackmail...I should know!

Oh yeah

I also had an amazing Christmas... Eric got me perfume, a rockin fun video game (complete with sword and shield attachments!), and I also got smell good stuff, videos, clothes, more Wii accessories (because who needs family board game night when we can all be mesmerized by the glowing lights of the TV?), and loads of other good stuff!
Oh, the remote control cars! The remote control car that, when they smash into something, will make a screaming noise and eject the driver. We had to wait for the kids to go to bed so we could have a go with them!
You may remember the "Woe Christmas Tree" story from a few posts back... I still have a hard time talking about it. Eric was kind enough to make it disappear from the yard today...
Speaking of "ole' Dad", he had a pretty good Christmas too! He is at the driving range right now trying out his new golf driver, has enough books (as do I) to last the entire year, new clothes to fit his slender 20-something-esque- physique, toys and games too! Here the three of them are playing with the rocket stomper... which if you jump on will in fact launch a rocket over the fence...
Hope everyone else had an awesome Christmas too!!!