Christmas Day 2011

When last we left the girls, they were anxiously awaiting the arrival of Santa...




...and yesterday morning, Keira woke us up to announce that he had brought presents!

Including ROLLER SKATES!!!!!!!!!

We ended up having to wake Ells up from what appeared to be the coziest sleep of all time, but when Keira said, "Ells, Santa came and left us presents!" she sat upright and started climbing out of bed before her eyes were fully open.

Ironically, I have no good photos of Keira wearing her roller skates, even though she hardly took them off all day. But, here are some other pics from our Christmas morning at home...

Ellie sporting the hair bow and Disney lanyard and pins Santa left in her stocking:


Keira got a Fancy Nancy calendar:


Ells got a new Curious George collection and a Dora one, too:


Both girls got handmade initial shirts by a friend of mine, tutus, and luggage (I got us Bears a set for $34 on Black Friday, too, so now we can travel without grocery bags!):


The reluctant child and the ridiculously excited child:


We got this cardboard color-your-own-rocket ship from Michaels for $10, and the girls have already had a blast (har har!) with it:




This was a Halloween costume on clearance, and will make a lovely addition to the girls' dress-up box. I adore this photo of our little Southern belle:


Ellie got a cute piggy bank, so now she has somewhere to put all the coins she shoplifts from Pap-Pap:


And I got a new camera from Bear--you can definitely see the difference in the rest of the photos I took! All the ones to this point were taken with my old Canon PowerShot SD 1300 IS, which I bought without doing much research because my previous one broke and I needed a new one stat! It didn't take very good indoor photos, which didn't work out so well for me since I take most of my pics at home or in my classroom. The new one is a Canon PowerShot S95, and I'm stoked that I don't have to re-learn an entirely new camera (the menus and functions are almost identical) but am getting MUCH better photos!

In the afternoon, we went to Uncle Ryan's house, where the girls opened gifts from Grammy and Grampy.

Tinkerbell flashlight? Awesome!


Keira asked, "What does this dolly do?" and, tragically, we had to explain to her that when all of us were kids, dollies didn't walk, talk, or excrete disgusting fluids into outrageously expensive little diapers. After a little demonstration from Grammy, the girls were all about rocking, carrying, burping, and snuggling their babies for the rest of the night:



Alice in Wonderland--woohoo!


The girls both got unbelievably cute little aprons (Ellie's is yellow with a bee pattern), and Keira's came with an order pad for playing waitress. She had a great time writing down everyone's orders (Daddy wanted "frid ris" and "pnkin pi" with "whit crem."), and then threw on her skates again for good measure. If anyone opens a 50's diner around here, they've got an employee in training!




Bear got to drink good beer and watch football, and I...well, I had this little reindeer to snuggle! Baby Cassidy was full of coos and smiles:


It's a good thing Ellie fell asleep during the hour-long drive to Uncle Ryan's house, because we didn't leave there until about 9pm and figured both girls would knock out in the car. Kiwi slept, but Ells had apparently snuck a few too many chocolates and was totally wired--she talked and sang nonstop! She entertained us with such gems as, "Let's play Car to Car! No, how about Sign to Sign? No, Mountain to Mountain!" (I have no idea what any of that means) and, "There's no picking bogies on Christmas." Duly noted, Ells. She was still wide awake when we got home after 10 o'clock!

I've been lucky enough to have some really wonderful Christmases in my lifetime, but this may have been the best one yet. Hopefully there isn't a finite amount of joy in the world and we didn't hog it all!