Home for Christmas

Contrary to the look on her face, she had a wonderful Christmas. From the moment we put up the tree and lay the first present beneath, it's been a constant trial to keep them from opening the packages. They would literally sit and stare at them asking if it was time yet. And each day we would mark another flap on the calendar, smiling and jumping the days away.
We had our first Christmas alone as a family. It was definitely different but nice. Andy worked a 24 hour shift the day before and since the kids and I had to take him back and forth, we all spent a lot of the time sleeping and playing in our pj's. In fact, we took the kids for a ride to see some Christmas lights and by time we reached the end of our road, they were asleep. We didn't get to bed early though since the kitchen took forever to put together!

Halle is a tough chick and a fireball to say the least, but she LOVES all things girlie. Dolls, make-up, princess, pink. Thanks to grandma's and grandpa's she got a kitchen, doll set and princess dress. Though Payton loves the kitchen too, he was excited to get a camera, puzzles and some train accessories. (It will be nice not finding pictures of random things on my camera. I one time found 40 pictures OF pictures on the computer.??)

"I'm just like dad!" Thankfully the stethoscope really works.

Halle pushed this around ALL DAY. I'm glad we didn't buy much because she wouldn't have known. She sleeps with her babies and when she walked in to see a NEW baby, she immediately threw her 'old'one. Poor doll, good thing they can't really talk like 'Toy Story'. Who knows what would really go on at our place.

Payton wakes up early so Andy and I set little 'booby-traps' to hear him wake up. We didn't want him snooping around before we all got up. We piled a bunch of stuff in front of the bedroom door, everything except a pit and a lion. Didn't stop him though. We of course didn't hear him and he came in to wake us up. He told us everything that was out there and gave us a tour when we came out to look for ourselves. The funniest thing was when he found a bell in his stalking. He looked at it, shook it near his ear and then staring at it again said, "I believe!"