Christmas was awesome!

So, there was nothing unusual or especially exciting to make this Christmas great, but it was anyway. Here are some pics from the big day ...

Actually, we'll start with Christmas Eve. We let the kids open their gifts from G&G Palmer so we could video chat with them while the gifts were opened. They each got a build-a-bear item: The girls got clothes and the boys got bears. We bought the items with money from my parents, and when we saw the Cinderella dress, we knew we had to get it for Shayla. Then we came home and she was in her own Cinderella dress. Needless to say, she LOVED it:


Zachary and Tyler's bears (who will eventually be Jedi bears) got names they requested for baby Austin. Zachary's is Zane Cooper, and Tyler's is Ty Jared. They LOVE them:


Becca got a couple of shirts and accessories. She was happy:


Then we got to making "gingerbread" houses. Don't tell my kids that graham crackers aren't real gingerbread, because they're happy with them. Mind you, they didn't look nearly as good as they do when Grandpa is in charge -- he cuts out cardboard houses for them to "glue" their crackers to. But they turned out okay anyway -- especially since they had all that pinata candy to use:


Christmas Eve we have a tradition of getting new pj's. I'm glad to carry this tradition over from my growing up years -- then the kids look great in their Christmas pics and they get new jammies once a year (something I may never spend the money on otherwise! :). The boys got Ben 10 jammies (he's some cartoon action hero kid), so they had to pose ... which means of course that Shayla had to pose, too. In fact, when she just saw the pics of her and Becca alone, she asked me what she was doing. Who knows! :) Becca loves the bow on her pants. I thought she would:


Paul and I hadn't wrapped any presents before Christmas Eve, and we didn't want to get caught, so we figured we'd let the kids fall asleep and get to it. Then we forgot to get to it until 11 p.m., so it took us until 2 a.m. to wrap all of these:


Not bad, eh? I love how you can see Christmas Story on the TV in the background. LOVE that movie. How can anyone have not seen it? I think TBS runs it for 24 hours straight on Christmas.

Anyway, I think one of the joys of the season is that my kids are very easily pleased. I mean, look how happy Shayla is to open a gift she wrapped herself (a stuffed animal she got at Disneyland more than a year ago, but wrapped a week ago to get more presents under the tree):


And it's not the Lego set Tyler requested, but he's giddy anyway:


Here's how the temple pic turned out for Becca, and she likes it:


Shayla's favorite gift (although you can't tell from her expression) was a CPK that looks like her:


Too bad the originals 25 years ago didn't have Black Friday specials for $10 like we got this one. But I will say that Shayla's has a tooth just like mine did 24 years ago. Was it really that long ago? And how do I still remember that mine was named Roxy Nina? We let Shayla name her own, so she goes back and forth between Ellie and Ella.

The boys got a REALLY cool race track, as you can see on Zachary's face:



Yes, we had a very relaxing, merry day! Of course, it was made even better by a cool gift from my kind hubby (a digital scrapbooking class) and the enjoyment of eating and drinking whatever I wanted (within reason, of course), instead of following my diabetic diet. Too bad I have to wait a whole year to enjoy Christmas again. :)