Christmas!

We were supposed to go to the cabin before Christmas and again after Christmas.  In fact, we had friends lined up to come with us before Christmas.  But then the girls got pink eye, Christopher got sick, and we got hit with a serious snow storm.  We kept thinking that we would wait for the weather to pass and then head up, but our friends sent us this picture when we asked for current conditions.

Nope.

That was fine, because it was good to stay home and get ready for Christmas anyway.

We had our traditional Christmas Eve at Grandma Skarda's house.  Lots of food, music, and cousins.

Jasmine was still a bit under the pink eye bug, and so we found her like this at 6 pm.  She tucked herself into Grandma's bed when she got tired.

The bigger kids like the parts they got in the Nativity.  The star costume was new this year, and he got into that part.

The best part of the evening, though, was the list.

Kaitlyn brought her yellow list for Santa.  When Grandma watched our kids earlier that month, she got to see what was on the wish list for Santa that Kaitlyn would not let us see.  She had been sworn to secrecy.  While we were a bit concerned about it, Grandma said that she decided it was okay.  Whatever that meant.

Other cousins got on Santa's lap and asked for candy, or small toys.  And then Kaitlyn hopped up and unrolled the giant list.

I've been told that the reason the list was so long is that it was mostly for other people.  She wanted Star Wars costumes for Daddy and Tyler, a new cage and hampster wheel and things for Fluffy, and sewing stuff for Mommy.  Oh, and her cousins wanted an elf.  A real, live, from the North Pole elf.

We stayed for a while that night to get the kids extra tired, and then headed home.

Thankfully, everyone mostly got what Kaitlyn thought they should get.  Fuzzy got a new cage.

Jasmine got her beloved  Take Care of me Lambie.  The family got light sabers, and that was almost like costumes.

Grandma and Grandpa had an empty house for Christmas, so we Skyped with them while we opened presents.  It wasn't the same as being with them, but it was the best we could do and I am so grateful that we could do it.

The boys (I'm including my husband in that term) spent the entire day playing around with the "green truck" Tyler asked Santa to bring.  This RC car actually goes up and over pillows and things, which the boys decided made it totally awesome.

And Kaitlyn spent the whole day testing out her microscope.

However, this picture was the one that made me the happiest this Christmas.  Tyler got some Legos for Christmas, and we talked to him about how they were smaller than his old Duplos because they were for kids 8 and older and Duplos were for little kids.  He wanted to make sure that Jasmine did not mess with his big kid Legos, which is a valid concern.  So he got the paper and pencil, and totally on his own wrote this note:

No Minecraft Legos
until you are older
than 8

What made me SO happy is that he did it all on his own!  That is the first time he has ever actually written anything down without someone right next to him, helping him through every syllable.  That note is the fruit of SO much work and practice.  I know it doesn't even look like English, but it is totally awesome to me.

At the end of the day, all the kids curled up in their new sleeping bags in the basement, and we watched Home Alone.  Which they deemed hilarious.  It was certainly a new experience to watch it as a parent of an (almost) eight year old, instead of watching it as the kid when I was growing up.  I laughed much harder when he unrolled the crayon drawing of all the traps he was going to put out, thinking about how Kaitlyn unrolled her yellow master plan of who should get what for Christmas the day before.

The best part about Christmas is just having a wonderful day to spend together.  We were rather snowed in, so Grandma couldn't come to visit us, and we just stayed inside as well.  It was a wonderful, white, Christmas!