Trust me. I do this all the time.: More Christmas

This, of course, is more for my record than anyone else's. It was baby girl's first Christmas and it must be recorded!

Speaking of the little girl, what do you do when you're leaving for Christmas Eve service right after dinner? Feed the baby in her bloomers, of course! Sam sat through the whole service with us, but had a difficult time waiting ALL the way to the end to get to hold his candle. He was so adorably serious holding onto that thing.

Did you like the gingerbread house in that shot? Sam and I made another one this year.

Don't we make a pretty bunch? After church there was still much to do - matching jammies to be unwrapped, reindeer food to be spread on the lawn, cookies and egg nog set out for Santa, the Christmas story read from the bible. And then we tucked the kids into bed, one with much more anticipation than the other.

Then the adults watched While Christmas while eating appetizers and cookies. And most of us fell asleep. Just like always.

First thing in the morning, the four of us opened stockings from Santa on Mommy and Daddy's bed.

Then we went down the hall to join the others in opening stockings from Gommy and Papa on their bed.

And then came the tree. Wow.

Sam went straight for his Mack Truck (from Cars). He started asking for it in early October. I was worried he'd blow right past it once it was there, but he stopped and played with it for a while. Actually, he played with pretty much everything as he opened it. He didn't even have any meltdowns. He had a great morning.

Annabelle had help opening her gifts, of course. She enjoyed her big Santa gift (the crawl-through house), but was all smiles when she pushed the button on the push toy from Uncle Matt and Aunt Kate. She even danced to the music! (Unfortunately, now that its put together she is afraid to actually walk behind it. Not so excited about the walking, this one.) She made it through the entire present opening session before heading up for her first nap.

A cinnamon roll Christmas tree, a lazy time getting ready. More cooking. My Uncle Tim joined us for dinner, and I had to trick my son into eating Beef Tenderloin.

The rest of the week was really nice. Chris and I got to go to a movie, he went to a second and I went out shopping. Ahh, free babysitters! The kids played and played with all their new toys. We played board games (grown up and candyland!) and hung inside to avoid the cold. Both littles enjoyed all of the grown up attention, but Baby Belle continued to show her preference for Mommy.

Did I mention that we drove? It took us 21 hours to get there - ugh! Sam is turning into a great little road-tripper, although we did learn he has a tendency towards motion sickness. He cannot watch a video on a hand-held device (he was using Chris's iPod), but does fine watching a DVD player placed between the front seats. Fortunately he is old enough to tell us when his tummy hurts and we were able to avoid a potentially disgusting situation. Annabelle struggled a bit more. She's in that awkward stage where she wants to be moving around but doesn't understand why we're STILL driving. And she's rear facing, so there's nothing to do or look at. This means grown ups get to crawl back to tend to her. And I think we scarred her - she is starting to fuss every time I put her in the car seat. Really too bad the AAP now recommends remaining rear facing until 2! But we made it home several hours faster and I'd do it again to have our car, be on our schedule, take what we need, etc.

There were still a few presents to be opened back home in Texas. One was the wagon from Grammy and Papa. It had been sitting in the front room, inside its shipping box, for weeks. Where are we going to put it? We told Sam it was for Chris's office, and he believed it. So a few days after we got home he asked if we were going to take it to Daddy's office. As we opened it we asked him what he though it was. "Ahh! It's for Children!" So cute. They didn't even wait for the wheels to be put on before the climbed in. Unfortunately it won't stop raining, so we've been riding it around our small house...