Christmas: Round 4

Christmas continued the following day at Lisa's. The kids were so excited to see and play with each other.
Abby immediately found this lizard and carried that thing around almost the entire time. Crazy girl!
The ball pit continues to be a huge hit.
Paige was so excited to show her new doll house off to Abby. And while Abby took over the play, Paige was thrilled to sit back, watch and take pictures of her cousin happily playing with her new toy.

Present time!
Lily sat patiently while all the gifts were handed out, but when it came time to open, she let Grammie do most of the work while she played with the snowglobes. Once her first gift came out (her very own picnic basket, she was off to play with that).
She LOVED this soccer ball (they all three got one, but she was super excited about her very own ball).
And of course, she found a baby doll, crib and bottle to play with.

Love Paige's face in this one.

All four of the twins' got umbrellas from Grammie. They LOVED them! I'm so surprised no one got hurt though with four almost four year olds running around with those things.

Look at Jake set up in the back with his umbrella, and M&Ms on Diego's truck. The Diego Rescue Center was a huge hit too (Ethan's present).

It's Bike time!! I can't believe these four are old enough for bikes!!

We had such a blast.

Merry Christmas!

Our first Christmas Morning! So, since this is our first Christmas morning at our house, John and I decided it was time we finally buy gifts for our kids. We haven't done so in years past because they really get all they could want from other family members (plus it's not like I don't buy them stuff throughout the year :-). We didn't go crazy, just two or three things per kid. It was great.
I decided to start us off with something new...a german pancake. I have never had one, nor have I ever made one, but it looked interesting. It came out like nothing I had ever had before. It's kinda like a soft-chewy eggy bread thing. It created this big bowl shape but it's super flat, like a pancake. It was good, but only Lily and I ate it. Everyone else opted for more traditional things. I think I'll have to try something else next year.

The twins were up at 6:30a like normal, but Lily doesn't get up till 8-9 so they had to wait a bit to open gifts. She was still sleeping at 9, so I woke her up so we could get the morning started. First up - stockings! Jake got three hotwheels and was super excited. Abby got gloves and glittery chapstick. Lily got a bitty baby and gloves. We were off to a good start.


Next, the presents under the tree.

All Abby wanted this year was a pillow pet. So, Santa didn't disappoint. One penguin pillow pet it was. She also got a talking dinosaur too :-)

Lily is all about her babies so she got a couple of diapers, a new outfit, bottles and a baby moses basket for her babies. She was in heaven and had to immediately try out the baby basket.

This boy is still all about wheels so a new remote control car and race car track was on his list.

The aftermath...

John also surprised me with a few gifts (we haven't give each other gifts since the kids were born). I got a Roomba (robot vaccuum), which I think Jake likes more than me, but it's great to catch all the mess in the kitchen. I also got some great oven mits since I'm always burning my hands on the oven when I take things out, and a second lens for my camera. I was going to get him stuff too, but he said he wanted a new dishwasher so that's what he got. He even got to install it :-).

Such a fun day.

Christmas Eve

This is our first Christmas at home and so we are making a lot of new memories and traditions. We started the morning off making Reindeer food (oatmeal and colored sugar) to put out before bed for Santa's reindeer. Then after naptime, we made and decorated birthday cakes for Jesus. We had been debating what kind of cake Jesus would like and the twins came up with chocolate cake with pink frosting. Originally I was going to make one cake but then as we were baking I quickly decided to leave the layers apart and give each of the twins their own cake to decorate. Lily woke up from her nap just as we started so I quickly came up with an option for her too. A birthday tree!
I gave Jake white frosting since I didn't think he'd like the pink too much. He picked out green and yellow sprinkles to decorate with.

Abby opted for pink and red sprinkles with her pink frosting.

Lily had a pink tree with pastel sprinkles. She mainly ate the sprinkles but did get a few on her tree.

After we decorated, we put candles on the cake and sang Happy Birthday to Jesus. We had so much fun doing this. Next year I'll have to make three cakes though.

Later that night before baths, we ran oustside in the rain to put feed out for the reindeer. The kids had so much fun running around the yard sprinkling the food around. Jake was careful and planned the best places for the food too. So cute.