Christmas 2010

Christmas found us this year in NC with my parents. Luckily Santa found us in NC too! The kids were a little worried about this at first until we explained that we had already written to Santa and told him where we were going to be. Whew!

Eve mostly enjoyed watching Luke and Miriam open presents and then she would try to play with them. We had to keep opening her presents and showing her that she was getting things too.

Luke and Miriam got these horses and have had so much fun riding around the house pretending with them.
What better gift than cash? Great Grandpa and Grandma Fife sent these Christmas cards with cash to the kids. They were sooooooo happy to go shopping with their own money.

Thanks Grandma Shelley for Rapunzel and Flynn! These are two of Miriam's most prized toys right now.

Santa brought Luke a Hot Wheels race track that he can re-create over and over. It has kept him so busy over the winter break from school. Thank you Santa! It's fun to watch Luke create the perfect track and problem solve when things don't go as planned.

Santa brought Eve this musical play table and she has really gotten into exploring all the different sounds. I love to watch her dance to the tunes when she is playing.

Morgan was so happy to get a new brown coat from his mom. He looks seriously cool in it.

Santa also brought Eve this corn popper. She really likes things to push and things that make noisy. It's not to hard to find where she is in the house...just listen for some noise.

Luke and Miriam exchanged gifts amongst themselves this Christmas. The day after Thanksgiving, Morgan took Luke and I took Miriam to Target and let them pick out a gift for the other sibling. They were so cute picking out the gifts and then insisting on wrapping them as soon as we returned to Georgia. Then the hard part of waiting for Christmas to come without telling the other what they had bought. Luke got Miriam a Polly Pocket doll set...

and Miriam bought Luke a helicopter Lego set.

See they do love each other...

In an effort to be better prepared for emergencies and for our future camping purposes, we got the kids headlamps for Christmas. It was so fun watching them wear them as they played with their Christmas gifts. Now when they lose something, they always ask for their headlamp so they can see if it is under their bed or hiding elsewhere in their rooms. We also got Luke and Miriam real sleeping bags that are designed for temperatures down to 30 degrees. They weren't too excited about those but I have some indoor camping ideas that will hopefully make them more excited about them.

This year I tried to be super crafty and make each of the children and Morgan a homemade gift. Call me crazy and over ambitious. I made Luke a Captain America shield.

Miriam and Eve got tutus. Eve looks like she likes the tutu, but actually she was screaming in this photo. Eve's not a fan yet, but I have visions of my girls spinning in them hopefully by next year. We don't have a picture of it but I made Morgan a photo book for our anniversary (which is 3 days before Christmas) and a coupon card for him to redeem evenings of video gaming with me on his new Goldeneye video game. I figured that he would appreciate that more than an apron.

Around noon on Christmas Day, the family came over to Maw Maw's and we had lunch. Then we had our Nativity play performed by the grandchildren. Luke was Joseph, Miriam was Mary, Connor was a Shepherd, Kaitlyn and Madison were angels.

Thank you all so much for the great gifts and the time that we were able to spend together. We love you all and hope you have a very happy New Year!