Christmas morning

Here's some shots from Christmas morning. We missed having family around a lot this year. It was probably a good thing since the kids were sick all week. Luke had Strep the Saturday before. Allie had a stomach bug and then Kate came down with Strep on Christmas Eve. It was horrible having her so sick. She would not sleep and cried all day. Poor thing! I was so tired, that when she finally took a nap around 4, I took one too instead of making Christmas dinner. We ended up making some fresh salsa and having tostadas for our Christmas dinner. Having one sick baby wiped us all out! (We did enjoy Christmas dinner that Sunday) The only thing that would pacify Kate was watching her new Elmo Christmas movie. We watched it so many times that we all have it memorized! We still had a nice day and the kids were excited to play with all their new toys.

They didn't really want to take this picture, but I made them. Our poor tree dried up so fast (I guess Oregon trees don't like Texas) I was surprised it made it to Christmas. Kate daily removed all of the ornaments at her height level. By the time Christmas came I was tired of putting them back on and they just sat in a pile under the tree.

Another Sesame Street book for Kate

Santa brought silly string in the stockings this year. What a mess--but a lot of fun!
This picture cracks me up. Allie looks like she is solving some serious computer problem. They are actually playing checkers with the Wenkinz animals. Allie and Luke got each other Webkinz for Christmas. Luke got a monkey and Allie got a guinea pig. (Webkinz are stuffed animals that you adopt and register on the web to play games with and earn fake money to buy things to take care of them.) It's kind of involved, but Allie could tell you all about it for an hour or so.
Santa brought Luke some more Lego sets. He's had his eyes on the Power Miners for a long time.
Santa brought Allie Disney Dance Dance Revolution and mats for the whole family. We had a great time playing this together.
Tennis rackets from Grandma and Grandpa Melanson. Kate got one too, but I couldn't get a picture of her with it. She does know how to use it though. Lookout!
Dale made Kate a puzzle. Can you believe he made this? It's amazing.
This is a new tradition for us. My aunt Peggy gives us for our gift a picture book of our family's adventures for the year. I get to make it and she gets it for our family. I decided as a gift for the kids, I would make them a copy of the book. That way when they leave home, they will have all of their pictures and little stories about the things that happened throughout their childhood. Hopefully it will be a tradition each Christmas. When the kids opened the book they spent a lot of time looking at it and remembering things they had forgotten. It was a neat end to our Christmas morning and a reminder what things we had been through and how blessed we are.