Christmas!

There's nothing like the excitement of opening Christmas Eve pajamas!  Even Arie knew something great was about to happen.

It's amazing how much work goes into creating the scene below.  Especially when you get too busy to wrap any of the presents beforehand.  See the clock on the wall?  That is really what time we went to bed.  I didn't take a closer up picture, but Mickey there in the front has an envelope with 5 day Disneyland tickets for us and a Mickey shirt for each child.  The kids were very excited.

Christmas morning!  Waiting at the top of the stairs before getting to come down.

Arie loved her car.  And her giraffe (more on that later).  They rode around together all morning in the car...

And in the wagon.  We could not convince her to put her stuff in the wagon and pull it around.  She was positive that she was supposed to sit in the wagon herself.

Stockings!

Santa also left this for us:

 

 Santa was kind enough to bring some little critters to live with us.  Guinea pigs, to be exact.  They got named Midnight and Snowball.  (The one on the bottom is all white with just a little brown on her head.  The lighting in the picture is bad.)  We actually had them about 2-3 weeks before Christmas, locked in our office.  And we actually kept it a secret.

I finished up all of my Christmas orders and got busy working on some things for my own kids.  The boys asked for scarves or big stuffed minions.  I just didn't have time to do the minions, so they got scarves.

Here is Arie's giraffe.

I made Natalie a Pinkie Pie My Little Pony.  I was worried about this one, but it turned out great.

Somehow I didn't get any pictures of this... but we got visits from both sets of grandparents after Christmas.  Nate's parents came later on Christmas Day and stayed for a few nights.  Then my parents came and stayed for a few nights.  It was really fun and the kids enjoyed having all of their grandmas and grandpas at their house.