Christmas

(warning ... long post)

A picture is worth a thousand words ... so I will skip the wordiness and just show you the picture. Here is how Christmas feels from our front porch:


For the first time we acted out the Nativity with our children. Molly was the angel (she also played Silent Night for us on the piano).


Jill was Mary, Elliot was Joseph, and Dave was the donkey.


Anna was the baby Jesus, but to tell the truth, she was a little rowdy.


We had a lovely Christmas Eve dinner with all of Dave's family. I made this pie (not to brag, but isn't it awesome!?!) Not only did it look pretty but it tasted really good too.


Anna enjoyed her dinner from head to toe.


We were so glad to be able to spend Christmas with Grandpa Randy and Grandma Nancy and all the Smith aunts and uncles.


The kids were so excited to see what Santa brought on Christmas morning. Their enthusiasm even brought Uncle Jason a little bit of the Christmas spirit.


One of my favorite presents under the tree (thank you to Andrea for telling me about it) was a pop-up Cinderella book. As you can see this book is waaaaaay better than your usual pop-up.


Uncle Jason and Aunt Kristin were so fun to play with. They built an amazing fort down in the girls bedroom and rough-housed and played scary monster.


The day after Christmas we went ice skating at the Rockefeller Center. It turns out that Grandma Nancy is a pro-skater, she can even do twirls! Aunt Sarah started out by holding on to the railing the whole way around the rink, and ended by jumping a triple lutz! She was amazing. I had to finagle a little with the manager to skate with the stroller, but I finally talked them into it and Anna loved it!


Jill and Molly were excellent skaters, thanks to their lessons this summer. Even Elliot skated on his first try.


One of the very fun presents we received was a membership to Discovery Gateway. This present is fun for the whole family, never gets broken, dirty, or lost, and (mom's favorite) doesn't have to be cleaned up after! We went on Saturday after Christmas and plan to go back very regularly. Here are Molly and Anna playing in the water table.


And here is Dave climbing the rock wall. (Notice the sign...haha)


Just FYI; you are now entering the adult section of this post.






If you have a weak stomach, please don't continue reading!






But if you were crazy enough to keep going...






Now you can see what I gave Dave for Christmas:


And here's what he gave me:


We totally didn't plan that! But, if you were wondering, now you know why we have so many kids!

Merry Christmas!

Implants

I know it's probably totally vain,
but I have wanted them for such a long time!

So I talked Dave into it.
And we saved up our money.
Finally on the 18th I got my implants! Yay!!

Just so you are totally warned, I have posted some pictures.
See if you can guess which is real and which is fake...


You are surprised to see teeth?
You weren't expecting something else were you?!?
Oh my heck! That is so perverted!

Here is the before (one on each side):
The shiny blue and gold things in my mouth are the "healing caps", which are actually part 2 of the whole implant process.

Part one is, they drill a hole into your jawbone (I know--it sounds crazy! But it's actually not much worse than getting a cavity filled.) Then they insert a screw right into that hole using a teeny-tiny (and probably very cute) socket set. Your bone grows right around the screw and this become the root for your new "tooth".

Then a few months later you get the aforementioned healing caps which make your gums spread out to make room for the crown which is placed on a few months later.

The crowns are amazing. They look totally real. Even I have a hard time distinguishing which ones are the fakeys. And they feel totally real to my tongue too. It's so great chewing...I really missed having those teeth!

So thanks dear, for letting me be so selfish and spend all that money on my mouth. I'll make it up to you--I promise. (Maybe I should look into some of those other implants...)

Icicle Lights

Dave took these pictures. We thought it was pretty funny that the icicle lights turned into icicles.

Birthday Girl

Anna turned 1 on Tuesday. She had a shirt that said "Today is my first birthday". I need to thank someone for that hand-me-down, but I can't remember who. (It's either Jenny S. or April R.--Thank You!!)

During Anna's nap, Molly and Jill helped me to bake and decorate a perfect teeny-tiny cake.

Anna loves to blow out matches, so she was a pro with the candle.


She definitely likes cake.


Here is one extra (and completely gratuitous) photo of the cake.

Out Takes

We took a Christmas picture of the kids last night. It's somewhat difficult to get all four of them to look at the camera at one time. We had to give Anna an ornament to play with to keep her from crawling out of the picture. Unfortunately, her favorite ornament is made up of many small jingle bells and you moms out there can probably guess what happened next...

The good news is, Anna is good at gagging and she didn't choke to death. The bad news is, I don't think the ornament is going to make it.

Humbug?

I read this funny in the Reader's Digest (Jan 2009 p.35) and I laughed until I nearly wet my pants.

For the holidays one year, rather than send gifts, my friend decide to enclose check in her greeting cards. Inside each card she wrote, "Buy your own presents" and then sent them off.

A few months later, she discovered the checks she'd "mailed" under a pile of books.

hahahahahahaha

Castles

Since we are studying medieval times in school, we decided to make some castles (you know, cause we are learning about the feudal system and such). I was totally pumped cause I found these weird box things that were perfect...just add t.p. rolls!Notice how Molly made tiny stairs and bridges on her rooftop.

Genius

I walked around the corner the other day and found Anna in this position. I hate to sound like a bragging parent, but, she seems way above average for an 11 month old!