Christmas 2010

Time for the obligatory Christmas post, I suppose. We had an absolutely fantastic Christmas and Christmas Eve, and the rest of the month has been alright as well, but I'm not sorry to see it go. Get out of here December, I'm done with you!

(I've been a little grumpy the past few days, so this post might seem a bit bitter. I apologize.)

This year I tried harder to focus more on Christ and giving, and less on Santa and gimmes. It's hard to strike the perfect balance with young children, but we did a little better than last year. And hopefully next year will be even better. Even if the kids don't notice it as much, I know I'm a lot happier when I cut back on some of the unnecessary aspects of the holiday and spend more time reflecting on the birth, life, and death of Jesus Christ.

We took video of the kids coming down the stairs Christmas morning, so we didn't take as many pictures. But here's a few worth sharing:

Tyler opening "How to Train Your Dragon" DVD. They did get Pillow Pets, you can see his dolphin in the background.

My sister-in-law and brother-in-law made this present for Tyler. They used that spray insulation stuff, an old hard top suitcase, paint, trees, etc. to make a dinosaur landscape for all Tyler's dinosaurs. This suitcase sat under our tree for weeks and the suspense was KILLING Tyler. It was worth the wait, it's a perfect present for him!

Here's Jeremy pretending to be surprised about the drill he got.

Proof that Ryan and I (and Ryan's other chin) were there too. Alexis gave him this chicken. You squeeze it and it looks like it's laying an egg. Ryan's saying, "What the...?"

This is the present I was most excited for. I had several things I wanted to make for people this Christmas, but this is really the only one that got done. I bought some Fancy Nancy fabric awhile ago with the idea of making something out of it for Alexis, but I wasn't sure what. I finally decided to make her a messenger bag because she likes to take stuff everywhere we go, so I found this red corduroy fabric to match and drew out plans for what I wanted it to look like. But since it's a Fancy Nancy bag I had to make it fancy, without being too annoying. So I added a cute button on the front, all that red fringe (which was pretty annoying to sew with), some blue ric rac on the back, and that blue sequined ribbon that's down the middle of the strap. I LOVE how it turned out and was so excited that she LOVES it too. She was happy to get it and has since taken it everywhere we've gone.

Later that day we went to my parents house to celebrate with my family. Jeremy took a nap and Aaron and Tricia's dog curled up right next to him. We thought it was funny because Jeremy is definitely not a dog person (or an animal person in general).

And because he amazes me every year, here's what Jeremy made when my family got together to make gingerbread houses:
Of course, every year he gets mad at himself because he spends too much time constructing something, then he always runs out of time for decorating.