Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

I can't believe today is the last day of 2010!  I'm in disbelief people.  Although, December 1st seems like 6 months ago because we always do so much in December.  Here is our recap of the Christmas festivities.  We have enjoyed the last couple of weeks with all the neighborhood kids home from school.  We've played several times in the cul de sac in our neighborhood and enjoyed several sunny days.  I'm typing this now with all our windows open in our house and enjoying the nice weather. 

We also had lots of pajama days.  We had days where the kids slept in PJ's, kept them on all day, and then slept in the same PJ's that night.  Here is Abigail on a PJ day holding her 6 and 9 so she can put her thumbs in the hole:

 

Abigail has also enjoyed sitting in Elm0's chair:

On Christmas Eve Joe got home early from work and we made some chex mix and granola:

 Here's what Santa left the girls on Christmas morning:

 The girls had fun looking around and checking everything out:

Emily got the "cutter food" from Santa that she had been asking for:

 

 Santa knew that Abigail would love the socks he left in her stocking.  She carried them around all morning:

 She also liked sitting in the box that Emily's cut up food came in:

 And for the first time since 1882, it snowed in Georgia on Christmas Day:

 Emily dressed herself after playing in the snow outside . . . isn't she lovely.  She was busy discussing who the good guys and bad guys were in the "Star Hors" movie she and Joe were watching:

 Joe even enjoyed the snow that evening while he grilled some chicken for our Christmas dinner:

 It snowed for over 12 hours on Christmas Day and left us lots of snow to play in the next morning:

 Emily and I even built a snowman!

 Sunday afternoon my family arrived and we had our annual finger food fellowship.  We always had this at my grandparents house on Christmas Eve and we are now carrying on the tradition:

 Joe helped my parents with their new E-reader that Dad gave to Mom for Christmas.  He thought he was cute using my sister's glasses:

 With my whole family here our tree looks full with all the presents:

 My parents let the kids open one gift before bed. They had recorded themselves reading a book to our kids and then had a book for Michelle's kids.  This book will be a great treasure:

 

After the kids went to bed we thought it would be fun for the adults to open gifts that night.  It was nice to be able to relax and enjoy each other's company:

 My brother gave me some lotion for Christmas so we all decided to give it a try:

 Monday morning the kids opened their gifts:

 Sam, Sawyer, and Emily all got matching super hero capes:

Uncle Robert gave Emily a washing machine for Christmas and Emily and Sawyer had a blast washing all the doll clothes my mom gave Emily.  Emily and Sawyer are only 9 months apart and play so well together.  It's fun to watch them:

 

We had a nice weekend together and a great Christmas!  We even turned Abigail's car seat around to end out the year.  Here she is riding in style while we ran errands yesterday.  She got an ear infection so I had to take her to the doctor on Tuesday but is feeling much better now:

 

And because I thought they looked so cute together, I got a picture of them riding in the cart while I bought groceries yesterday:

 Happy New Year!!!!!

Painting

On Friday we went to a friends house and she got paints out for everyone and they all painted some ornaments.  Well Emily is now in love with painting and asked if she could paint this afternoon.  So on our way home from church we stopped at a craft store and bought paint and paintbrushes and Emily picked out some wooden pictures to paint:

A Sunday afternoon well spent . . .

Abigail Walking . . . sort of

Abigail started walking tonight with her walker . . . so we are getting closer people!
Here is a video of her on the go:



She walked up and down the hallway for a good 30 minutes tonight. She would get to the end and get stuck and bounce up and down and squeal at me to turn her the other way.

It's been VERY cold here this week so Emily has had to get creative indoors. We've played Santa about 1000 times this week where she tells Santa what she wants (i.e. me) and then goes to "sleep" while I put toys out for her. And then she does the same for me. On Monday morning she told me she was decorating for Santa. She took out all my old Christmas jewelry and hung the "ornaments" on the curtain hooks in our room:

She said Santa will think it's so beautiful when he comes to our house : ) I sure do love that girl!

Santa

We visited Santa on Saturday morning.

While we waited in line Emily had fun playing on the trains. Abigail enjoyed Joe walking her around:
Abigail wasn't too sure about Santa but she never cried. She just gave us looks like . . . can we get this over with soon : ) Emily loved talking to Santa again:
Saturday afternoon we visited a used bookstore that had a nice kids area. Joe and Emily enjoyed looking at books in the bean bag chairs:
Check out which book Abigail chose to look at:
Last night I finished the girls outfits so they wore them to church this morning:
We had a small reunion at church today. The Youngs were back in town this weekend so several families visited church with us to see the Youngs and then we all went to lunch together. It was a nice visit.

And this picture is just because . . . Abigail was really excited this afternoon after her nap: