Merry Christmas

In case you missed it, yesterday was Christmas. A very merry one in our house. Evan came into our room at 5:20 AM to report that Santa had come and left presents, but went back into his room for a while (with a couple more trips downstairs to snag some toys) until Eric woke up a little before 7. And he was not kidding, Santa had left us some LOOT!

The 'before' shot

Books and toys galore for both kids (we need to do some purging this weekend to make room for it all), gadgets and gizmos for Ethan, camera accessories for me.

Eric posing for my new lens next to my new camera bag

Evan and Eric enjoying their new 'pinano'

Evan showing off some books

...and let's not forget the ginormous dinosaur (over 2 feet tall, and a little intimidating!)

And what does our house look like after opening dozens of presents and being overtaken by a piano keyboard, giant dinosaur, performing Elmo, multiple electronic puppies (even one that fetches), towers of blocks, and a dump truck?

A mess :-)

Evan's Christmas Show

Evan's class got to sing at the local mall today. Aside from the kid who kept getting between my video and Evan (seriously, every time I moved, so did the kid), it was pretty darn cute. The video is about 8 minutes long, but the first song is my absolute favorite and definitely worth watching. The other 6 minutes are for the grandparents ;-)

Our very own Higglytown Hero

We were sitting at dinner tonight (at a restaurant) when I noticed a gap in Evan's mouth where a loose tooth used to be. Looking closer, he had in fact lost his tooth, but had no idea when/where it happened. And then came the tears...after taking him outside and calming him down, he was just upset because he thought the Tooth Fairy wouldn't come unless he had the tooth. Poor kid! I explained these things happen and we would write a note to the Tooth Fairy and everything would be okay when--voila!!--Ethan came out with the tooth wrapped in a napkin. Apparently he found it in--eww--the cheeseburger Evan had been eating.

Hooray for another milestone in life!!

Vacation

Each week, Evan has a 'job' to do at school. Line leader, door holder, table cleaner, etc. I asked him what his job is this week.

"I don't have a job, I'm on vacation."

Ah, to be young!

Silence

Unfortunately, I'm the only one being silent, and that's because I caught a cold and lost my voice. Well, not completely, but when I talk I'm sure people prefer I just keep my mouth shut because it's not a pleasant and it takes me a great deal of effort and pain to speak at a volume that people can hear. So, if I were in a room by myself, it would be quiet.

We have had an awesome weekend in our house, the cold/voice thing aside. Saturday morning the kids went on a playdate so Ethan and I had a morning to ourselves. As nice as that sounds, we spent most of it doing things around the house--fixing the gate, putting up Christmas lights, cooking food. Last night we had a nice gathering of friends at our place to celebrate the holidays a little early. It was fun...lots of kids, plenty of food and drink, and good occasion to visit with old and new friends. Everyone in our house went to bed way too late, but still didn't sleep any later in the morning :-( But the show must go one and we had an invitation to go watch football and one of the kids' friends' houses, so away we went.

I need to call out how impressed I am with my children AND my husband for their behavior today. It was awesome. My husband, who is used to controlling the remote and snuggling with his laptop to keep up to date on his fantasy football even looked like he was enjoying himself watching only the Eagles game. And I'm sure there is some sort of dark ugly storm coming as payback for how good Evan and Eric were all weekend :-)

And now both kids are engrossed in Sesame Street, so I'm going to really enjoy some silence :-)