Christmas Follies

What a great two weeks of fun our family has enjoyed. Not sure how to web a cohesive story about all our adventures, so you will have to be happy with the following pictorial review.

My sister Ann joined us for the festivities. We loved having her with us! She was here by Christmas eve and helped all of us gear up for the big day!

Constant checking of Norad's Santa tracking website. They were so in to it. In fact, when they went to bed that night, they begged us to go down and check it so that we knew if he was getting close that we had to hurry and go to bed so that Santa would stop at our house. Too cute!

The Great Debate: How many cookies does Santa eat at every house and how many carrots are the "right" amount. After much back and forth, they settled on six cookies and 8 carrots.

The final picture before going to bed with high hopes and excitement for the daybreak.

Here they are ripping into the big Santa present.

The camera caught this expression as he read the back of the steelers shirt. "Polamalu" -- he was loving it!

Santa brought CJ the "little sister, Purpley" to her Pinky horse (a white stuffed horse with a pink saddle). This gift was on CJ's Santa list for the last 3 months. Let me just say how excited I was that Santa was able to make this toy that CJ dreamed up in her head. It was just right, according to CJ, albeit "smaller" than she was hoping or thought it would be. That's when I reminded her that it was the "LITTLE" sister.

The the next day was spent playing with all the new games. Guess Who was CJ's favorite. While Alexander was all about marathon Uno.

To finally burn some of that energy, we all headed ice skating. This was the first time the kids tried ice skating while it was Ann, Zack and my first time in something like 15 to 30 years. Not sure what was more special about this day: was it the success and fun everyone had ice skating or the fact that CJ was wearing pants???

The Tuesday after Christmas, we headed to visit family. First to Zack's sister to exchange gifts with them and Zack's dad. It was a great visit for the five adults and 8 cousins.

CJ and Saren all dressed up.

Gift exchange, Part Two.

I guess you could call this controlled chaos.

Then we hopped in the car to head to my Mom and Dad's house. Another house full of aunts, grandparents and cousins. The kids were in heaven!!! On Wednesday, Zack and I took the kids and our nephew, Mike, to the Please Touch Museum in Philly. Talk about an interesting place to people watch!! The kids loved all the stuff to push, pull, poke and throw. I was on a mission to find every available Purell station.

This was a cool green-screen, dress up area. I can't believe we got Alexander to wear a pseudo costume!

Curiously, Alexander was the best of our group hula-hooping. He can shake those hips!

This was Flamingo croquet from Alice and Wonderland.

That night it was our last present opening escapade with the cousins and my parents. CJ opened two presents and then declared, "That's all I get?" Nice. That was a proud mommy moment! (Please detect my comment's dripping sarcasm).

These cousins look like they had enough of Christmas. Love the expressions of boredom on all of them.

My Mom and Dad. Always great to see them and spend some quality time.

Aunt Mary came through on this present. CJ opened it and within 2.3 seconds had changed into it. Three days later she is still wearing it. Not sure when I will get it off of her to wash!

We headed home the following day and everyone was a bit exhausted from late nights, early mornings and copious amounts of Christmas stimulation.

Another soon to be classic picture of CJ. Her Aunt Ronece gave her a dress up kit and she just had to put it all on. She stayed like this for most of the afternoon, belting out the lyrics to all of her own made-up songs. Hannah Montana better watch out!