Awww I miss it!

So I just went and read some old posts and looked at some pictures and realized that I miss blogging. Who'da thunk? :)
I don't know that I'll be able to catch up from September so I will just start with from now...
Christmas! WOW!!! I've ALWAYS loved Christmas. I love the decorations, the food, getting together with family & friends and of course presents. I love giving just as much (maybe more even) than receiving!
I knew that it would be hard to Christmas shop for the kids b/c I always have them so all year long as I found stuff and if I was able to get out on my own I'd buy things that I'd find on sale and 'whatnot' and tuck it away in a closet or attic. (As I'm typing this, I just realized that I forgot to get The Boys dump truck that I got him back in June on clearance for like $3 down from the attic) Well once I got (what I thought was ALL) the stuff together, we realized the kids were going to have one crazy huge Christmas. In fact, one of the things I got The Girl, we decided not to give to her right now, we are going to save it for her birthday. :) After it was all wrapped and set around the tree I asked C what he thought and he said "we look rich". LOL Yes it was too much STUFF but it was crazy fun though!
Sunday didn't turn out at all like I saw in my head. We had planned to go to church in the am and then come home and let the kids open their gifts. Weeeeeeellllll, the alarm clock didn't go off at 7:30 like we needed it to, C woke up at 9:11 & then woke me up. We decided that he and The Girl would go to church and that the Boy and I would stay home since there was no way that the 4 of us would be able to get ready and leave the house in 20 minutes. The Girl didn't even remember that it was Christmas and was out the door w/ her daddy w/out even seeing the presents. The Boy and I hung out in the house, he did catch sight of "melmo" slippers hanging from his stocking so I let him wear them.
When C and The Girl got home though, she knew what the deal was by then (I'm sure people at church asked her about her Christmas). In the past, she was slow about opening presents and wanted to play with whatever she opened right then so it became an all day process. That wasn't the case this year. She tore through that paper like it was a race to the finish. The Boy however adopted the girls old method of opening and playing right away, so he still had stuff to open all day long.

Side note:
We had a friend with us, we've spent every Christmas with her since 2007. Her dad passed away in Feb of 2007 and her mom remarried this summer and moved away but she wasn't able to go visit b/c of work the next day. So we enjoyed having that extra set of hands now that there are two kids needing things opened and supervision at the same time. lol We were invited to dinner at a friends house, who have 2 kids S and G's ages, so the kids were able to have a blast while the grownups got to actually hold conversations! YAY! This Christmas dinner had to be the first time I didn't have lasagna or turkey for Christmas dinner. We had gumbo. It was my first time. I actually liked it! (It wasn't my favorite food but I'd eat it again.) I'm a sucker for tradition though so I'm pretty sure when Christmas dinner is in my control it will be either lasagna or turkey for me! :)

The Girl ALMOST spent the night with her friend, but we are thinking that at the last minute she had a major cause of nerves and she pulled out in the most dramatic way possible! She feigned illness!!! HELLO!?!?! She's 4!!!!! She pulled out all the stops though; gagging, crying, saying her belly hurt, sitting on the potty.... it was quite the show. As soon as we were able to convince her to get out of the bathroom b/c we were leaving.... she was fine and running around and wanted to give her friend her present and totally acting like nothing was wrong. I had to chase her downstairs TWICE to get her to actually leave. CRAZINESS I tell ya!!!

Here they are opening some gifts from Grandpa and Nanna-Beth:





Christmas present time! :)
The final product:








The Boy would hand me a present to open if it was "too well" wrapped. (good thing I got lazy after wrapping for a while b/c I left little openings for him to grab.)












This is a FAVORITE of hers:


Can't you tell??? LOL
She also got a "kids nook" that we let her open before bed on Christmas eve. It is actually a Leap Frog leap pad. On it she can play games, read books (have them read to her) it is an inter active touch screen thing and it is AWESOME!

And one of his favorites:




I'd LOVE to show you more pictures but we don't have any! This year C decided he was going to be the photographer and well, that didn't work out very well. He got too caught up in all the excitement and the camera got forgotten about. (I kinda did too or I would have grabbed it and started snapping away.)

We had a blast with the kids and I wish I could do this with them everyday! :) (sorta!)

Today we are off to visit the family that I used to be a nanny for when we lived in St Louis. They have family about 45 minutes from us and they come down once or twice a year. It works out great, we get to visit them too! :)

~til next time!