Merry Christmas 2012

My babies are getting so big!

 

(I would like to point out that this is basically an amazing photo because they are ALL looking at the camera.)

Here they are waiting

to go down and see the

tree and the presents...

 

They were all so excited that they woke up at some ridiculous hour, like 4:30 am.  They knew they couldn't get up until 7, so they just turned on the lights and laughed and giggled.  

I think this might be the last Christmas when Barbies and Legos are cool.

Hazy was very happy with her light-up, chewable ball.  

 

And Anna loved her Happy Birthday Barbie.

 But I think Elliot and Dave were the most excited about the nerf guns.  

Guess which one is the grown-up in this picture?  

(That's a trick question.  They are both little boys at heart.  :)

 Thank you Grandma Nancy for the Animal Jam gift cards!!!!!

A neighbor asked Dave if he got anything nerdy for Christmas
and he said no.

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!

Icicle Lights

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

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.