Christmas!

Well, Happy Christmas everyone! I know that it was pretty eventful here.  I enjoyed the whirlwind weekend and it was over so quick! Where to start?

Well, we worked a full day on Friday.  Big deal, right?  Lots of people work through the holidays.  Well, we're relatively spoiled by the days off that we usually have.  So, when we came home on Friday, we were exhausted. We spent the evening cleaning up and making some food.  We cheated and ordered dinner for the first time in months. We have given up eating out, fast food and delivery except for once a month to save money, but we figured this was an important occasion.  On Saturday, my parents came to visit and then we all left for Christmas Eve at Ben and Lael's house.  It was the usual fun.  The kids were chomping at the bit to open gifts, and the adults were trying to hold them back.  Grandparents went overboard with the amount of gifts and it was a whirlwind of paper, presents and kids.  Brooks could have essentially cared less.  He was more excited on stomping boxes than opening or playing with gifts.  

Brooks's pile

Four generations of Henry men

Dinner

Abby chose to eat Ritz crackers for dinner.

The best gift of all.

The kids were exhausted when we left and Brooks went right to bed when we got home.  Abby stayed up for awhile, found the cookies, milk and carrots for Santa and his reindeer, and made my mom read The Night Before Christmas to her.  My dad put her to bed and we had to tell him to cut the reading short so Ray could assemble her gifts.  It was fun watching him put the drums together without making a ton of noise.

Ignore the rotten carrot- Mommy was lazy.

The next morning, Brooks got up before Abby.  Abby slept until almost seven and Brooks got up at 6:30.  We were able to get things ready before Abby came down a little more.  Abby wasn't getting too many little toys from Santa since she cleaned up well at her birthday party just 15 days prior, so the elves were holding and hiding the drumsticks.  Brooks was NOT interested in opening the gifts at all.  He chose to sit and eat Gluten Free Rice Chex.  Gross.  Abby was holding in her joy and enchantment disappointment at opening clothes, tights and socks.  She got some Toy Story people though.  We asked her where the elves were and she found them holding drum sticks.  She instantly knew what she was looking for! She roamed around a little and we helped her find the drums.  She was really excited about that gift.  She instantly started giving concerts and banging the drums all morning long.  It only got more intriguing when my parents gave her a guitar.  She was a one-man band.  Brooks got the Little People Nativity set.  Everyone got the necessities of clothes, gloves, hats and socks.  What a nice Santa! I'm hoping next year that Santa can be a little more generous. Ray told me that I need to get over myself, that Santa is not meant to be ridiculous and spoiling.  I guess he was right, there were millions of gifts from all of the grandparents.

Opening

Eating. Not opening

Grumpy (all three look it here)

Brooks playing with a toy he already owns.

The token picture of Mommy.  She is ALWAYS behind the camera and doesn't exist in most holidays.

After the hoopla of the morning, we had visitors in and out all day.  We had Grandma Karen, Grandpa David and Barb in the morning for breakfast, and Mr. Patrick.  In the afternoon we had Gram and Grandpa Ben, Grandma and Grandpa Henry and our neighbors Deena and Eddie.  It was nice to have visitors.  Everyone was tired midday and we managed to rest for a few minutes. I think that Abby enjoyed showing off all of her toys to her family.  She especially likes the Mobigo that she got from Gram and Grandpa Ben.  She likes the Rapunzel (Tangled) game.

Brooks chooses to play with the vacuum from two years ago.

Twins!

Jamming

Mr. Patrick gets in the groove

Jesus's birthday cake.

Playing with Mr. Eddie from next door.

Grandma and Grandpa Henry

Overall, Christmas was a great day.  We were both exhausted by the ten in the morning the end of the day, and it was great to get a good night's sleep.  Neither Ray or I were able to buy each other real gifts, but that's okay because the kids had a good day and it seemed like everyone had fun when they came over. We have plenty of food and snacks left, and it seems like we've been lucky enough to eat millions of calories.
This morning we went to my brother and Kristin's house for breakfast. They made fantastic french toast, eggs and mochas.  It was great to catch up and the kids had a great time running around their house terrorizing their train and threatening all of their foreign breakables.  They got some great gifts from Hawaii and Abby got a ukelele.  She has been dancing around being a "hukelele" girl today.
The kids love that the has so much space (we do too).
I'm glad that Christmas was so much fun for the kids.  This was Abby's first real 'excited for Christmas' year.  It was a nice set of days and I think that we will have a lot of fun this week playing with all of their toys and gifts. 

I"m glad that we were