A Merry Little Christmas

It's been a wonderful couple of weeks at our house. With all the activity of 2010, we decided we just wanted to stay put for Christmas this year. I'll admit that it was a little strange not being with either of our extended families, but we had a nice celebration just the four of us.

I have lots of pictures taken over the course of 3 or 4 days, but I'm just going to jumble them all in to one post. Seems like too much effort to break it up (or rather, I've got two kids who don't give me much time to get stuff like this done).

Dylan's new favorite game is Jenga. He loves to play the actual game, build stuff out of the blocks, or wear the game box as a hat. And occasionally force Lena to wear the box for a hat. Poor little Lena...she just has no clue that she will be getting harrassed from her brother and father the rest of her life.

Eight months later and this little girl still makes my heart melt. I fear that my attempts to keep her a baby a tad bit longer are keeping her from doing certain things (crawling, pulling up, eating real food). I just can't help myself. She's so teeny and loves to be snuggled; I'm eating it up.

The temps are keeping us indoors quite a bit, but Lena loves to sit at the back door and stare out at the snow.

I made several attempts to get a 'good' picture of my kids in front of the Christmas tree. I don't think I ever got a shot where both of them are looking at the camera. Ah well, this is life with kids.

Dylan had preschool up til the 23rd. On the last day before break, his class had a pizza party and a little gift exchange. Mrs Baker gave all the kids a Divine Grace t-shirt that has their names on the back. All the kids immediately wanted to wear their shirts. Dylan didn't take his off until the next morning.

Playing a game before the festivities.

I bought the kids super cute, coordinating Christmas outfits before Thanksgiving. I have been dying for them to wear them and get a picture. Unfortunately, Dylan being 4 and all, it didn't happen. It took me a half hour just to get Dylan's outfit on his body. Then he screamed about it for another hour. Luckily, Lena still loves the camera. She looked so stinking cute.

We decided to follow my family's tradition of celebrating on Christmas Eve. I made a nice dinner and then we opened our gifts.

Lena was into if for about, oh, 5 minutes. She started crying while opening her first gift and it went downhill from there. I ended up just putting her to bed and Dylan and I finished opening her gifts.

It's rare that I get a picture of Mike. Looks like he's posing for me, but this was a total coincidence.

Again, rarely a shot of me. Mike was not so kind with the expression he chose to take a picture of.

Dylan just kept telling me he loves me as I was handing him gift after gift after gift. This year was the most fun with him, so far. He was totally into everything and so greatful. He made out like a bandit.

Part of Dylan's loot.

I did save a gift for each child to see on Christmas morning. Since Dylan has shown no interest in Santa, Mike and I have decided not to push the idea on our kids. We'll tell them the idea and story behind the jolly guy, but really do not care that they believe he comes and leaves the presents under the tree. Dylan and Lena's Santa is their Grandparents. Gram and Pa gave each child their own chair this year. So, I put them together after the kids went to bed Christmas Eve and left them by the tree. When they came down in the morning, their eyes just lit up. Dylan was so excited and immediately sat down to play his Leapster in HIS chair.

Lena also loves her chair. She loves to sit in it and just look around while kicking her little feet. It is so cute to watch.

We spent Christmas dinner with my dear friends, the Pollard family. They are my adopted family and have been for years and years. It's nice having them around.

We're definitely looking forward to the New Year. As a whole, 2010 was not such a great year for us. So, we'll be saying good riddance come Friday evening.