Christmas

Somehow, earlier this week, I thought about what I was going to say on my blog, and then mentally checked off that I had written on my blog. And now I forgot what I was even going to say! LOL.



Anyway . . .


Christmas was fun around here! We went up to see my extended family for Christmas Eve. The big shock for me was seeing my Grandpa- he just had surgery on his eyes, because he could barely see even with his glasses. And so while they were fixing the cateracts, they went ahead and fixed his vision, so now he doesn't need his glasses! He has been wearing the same frames in every picture I have ever seen of him, way back into the 1940s. So seeing him without glasses was quite strange. At 95, my Grandpa is just amazing.

And then we had a great Christmas morning here at our house. Not that the kids understood why there were more new toys to play with suddenly, but they were quite happy to enjoy it anyway. The big item for this year was the "new" train table. When we visited Ohio last August, my mother found a train table at a garage sale for $20, and Tyler spent the entire visit hanging out at that table. We have had a small train set here for a while, but it had no home and we always missed that awesome table. So Grandma sent it here for Christmas! It cost about as much to ship as it would have to buy a new one, minus the fact that this one is bigger and more solid than ones I have seen in stores, and it has two drawers for parts. We set the table up when it arrived, but it wasn't very interesting to the kids until Christmas morning when they came down to see a new, big train set laid out for them. They both loved it (though Tyler was rightfully a little possesive when baby sister tried to grab and eat all of his train bits).

Christopher gave me a new lens for Christmas - 50mm with 1:1.8f - that many people have recommended as their favorite, so I was really pumped about that. He was even thoughtful enough to give it to me the night before so I could use it on Christmas morning. It takes a bit of getting used to, switching from a zoom lens to a fixed one, but the lower f-stop rating more than makes up for it. I think I am hooked. (If that doesn't make any sense to you, just skip over it!)

The kids had lots of little presents to open from cousins in Vegas (we draw names in my family- thanks Scot and Kathy!) and Grandparents, as well as from us, and it was fun to just make a nice, slow morning out of it. They weren't into the unwrapping very much, so we just let them have 10 mintues with each new toy before moving on. It was great! I'm sure as they get older it will turn into a frenzy soon enough.

And the big ticket item to each other this year was Rock Band 2 for our PS3. We bought the PS3 for the blu-ray playing part, and this was actually the first game we got for it! We have had guitar hero for the Wii for a while, but I think we might sell it to fund Rock Band, because I love the drums a lot, and we both liked that the characters were just a little more clothed, along with more songs to choose from (once we unlock it all). And the kids love the drum sticks, which is rather concerning actually . . .