Christmas Fun

Chris was able to get 2 1/2 weeks off for Christmas this year, although he did end up working a lot from home.

People are surprised that we don't go home for Christmas and that we haven't gone back in about 7 years, but we have come up with our own traditions that we love and it's even more fun to start sharing those traditions with our kids. It's also been fun to find new traditions with each move.

Cordon had a Christmas program for school.  It was so cute and so much fun to watch.  He is on the top row with the long sleeve white shirt.

We went to the aquarium and saw Scuba Santa.  It was a cute little show about how the reindeer ran away so Santa had to go underwater to get sea horses to pull his sled. 

We decorated gingerbread men.

 We fed birds

 Chris dressed Eliza for church.

The kids loved making cookies for Santa.  Cordon actually made cookies while Eliza treated the cookie dough like it was play dough.  

We went to Cheesecake Factory for dinner and the kids decided it was a lot more fun to look out the window then to eat their food.

On Christmas Eve night we read the Night Before Christmas and had Egg Nog.

Christmas morning was so much fun.  We were able to draw it out for 2 1/2 hours.  The kids did a great job of taking turns opening presents and watching the other person open their presents.

Cordon was very animated and had fantastic expressions on his face for every present he opened. 

Eliza looked like this the whole time.

She was enjoying herself and liked the presents but she showed no emotion on her face.  It was pretty funny. 
Then we got the infamous turtle....
my mom asked what the kids would like for Christmas and I told my mom some suggestions.  Two days later I called her and told her to take back what she had gotten for Eliza and get her a stuffed turtle.  Eliza has been obsessed with turtles for months and I knew she would just love a stuffed turtle. 

So my mom obliged and sent a box with a stuffed Squirt and a stuffed Nemo.  (apparently the Nemo was a random after thought)

Look at Elizas face while pulling out the turtle

Now look at her with Nemo.  She put Squirt in the new play kitchen oven and she hasn't touched it since.  Cordon has taken over the turtle and has carried it around everywhere for the last week while Elza insists on sleeping with Nemo every night. So much for my theory on her loving a stuffed turtle.

The final pile of loot

Christmas dinner sure was yummy

The kids got me presents for Christmas and my birthday.  Cordon got me the mirror and Eliza got me that purple glowing thing.  She handed me the gift bag, pulled out the tissue paper for me, grabbed the purple thing and ran away with it.  I had to wrestler her for it just to get this picture.  She cracks me up.