The Best Morning of the Year

What an anticipated morning! Santa brought some fun presents. Sydnee got a microwave that goes "ding, ding" as Sydnee says, and Hallie got a learning laptop.

I surprised Cam with an ipod touch

and Cam surprised me with a GPS since I get so lost every time I take the girls downtown for anything (pathetic, I know!).


We got lots of other great gifts...
Among them was "Blurt!" which we played at least a dozen times within three days. So thanks Ryan and Nicole for the present that's gotten the most use so far! We loved playing it, Hallie actually told Grandma to stop yelling the words so loudly. My Mom tried to not yell out the words but let's be honest, blurting is the point of the game, so blurt all you want Mom!

During the few days that my family was here, Stacey got her haircut from my friend and donated 10 inches to Locks of Love and Cam and Ryan took the girls out for a spin on the snow.

'Twas the Night Before Christmas...

We got to host Christmas again this year and I am so grateful for that! I love hosting just about anything, and I especially love hosting my family at Christmas. My brother, Ryan, was with us for the first time since before his mission which brought lots of extra laughter, teasing, and lack of food having him around but it was great!

On Christmas Eve, we made our usual finger foods including little pizzas for the girls and we played some Minute-to-Win-It games which was a riot! We laughed til we cried or peed our pants, whichever came first. If you haven't seen the show, the point is to finish each game using household items within one minute. The first game involved using your facial muscles to move an Oreo from your forehead into your mouth, Cam won that one and the rest of us were laughing so hard we couldn't keep the Oreo on our faces.

Then using a candy cane, we had to hook the six other candy canes on our candy cane and Stacey won with a time of less than 15 seconds. Even Hallie and Sydnee did a great job on that game. Then we had to wrap our partner using an entire roll of crepe paper the fastest and Ryan and Stacey won, spinning around as fast as he could.

Before the night was over, we celebrated Grandpa's birthday and the girls gave him an ornament that said, "Grandpa's the next best thing to Santa," and Grandpa blew out his birthday candles.

After that everyone opened up Christmas Eve pj's. The girls usually get a new bedtime story with their pj's and this year I made a storybook titled, "Our Alphabet Zoo" using the digital scrapbooking program I have and each page contains pictures of that letter. Hallie thought it was so cool to have pictures of her and all of our adventures and loved ones in a real book.

Then it was off to bed for the best morning ever...

Santa Did the Impossible... He Came to our House!

My stress and worry that I would have a four-year-old non-believer in our family was finally too much so I took did something drastic and arranged for Santa to visit our house! It helped of course that our association does Santa visits every year and this year I signed us up thinking it would be just the thing to make a believer out of Hallie. We were "taking family pictures" in the living room when we heard jingle bells and a loud "Ho, ho, ho" outside our front door and the girls immediately ran to the door screaming, "Is it Santa!?"

Cameron let Santa in and Santa somehow got their stockings off our fireplace ahead of time and filled them and gave them to the girls early. Santa knew everything about them, their names, ages, their favorite things, the list went on.

Sydnee of course went ballistic and couldn't believe Santa was at our house and Hallie just took it all in quietly. She sat on his lap and talked with him one-on-one as she examined every seam and stitch on his costume and hair on his beard and after he left we asked what she thought of Santa coming to our house. She turned around with a big smile on her face and said, "That was BRILLIANT!" Lol, not sure if she knew that we arranged the meet and greet but ignorance is bliss right? I'm going to believe that she is now convinced there is a Santa Clause.

Hallie's Christmas Program

Hallie's preschool put on a Christmas program and Cam surprised her by taking off of work to be there for it since it was in the middle of his ever-busy work day.

Hallie's class sang five or six songs and then back in her classroom, they presented their parents with a present which promised a few tears: their little hand prints on plaques.

Hallie sang her little heart out and had been practicing the songs for weeks before at home. I knew the song, "Apple red happiness, popcorn cheerfulness, cinnamon singing inside. Peppermint energy, gumdrop holiday when you give Christ your life" better than some of the kids did.
I signed up to help with the Christmas party so me and another Mom put lots of stress, blood (literally from all the hot gluing) and tears into the nativity snow globe ornaments we made for the kids but they were so dang cute!

New Ornaments

Every year on Elf Day the girls get new ornaments for the tree that represents something they did that year. Hallie got a ballerina and Syd got a "Princess of Potty-Training" ornament which was only appropriate since she potty-trained in 24 hours.

And yes, in case you were wondering, the questions about the elf and Santa are still coming strong from our four-year-old-unbeliever! Ugh! But stay tuned for the next post... Mommy went above and beyond to convince our non-believer this year...

It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas...

I love Christmas time! I love the warm feeling that Christmas decorations and the lights bring to our home and the sweet spirit Christmas music has as you listen to it. We set up our Christmas decorations the other day including three of our four trees (what can I say, I'm obsessed with this holiday!?). Hallie always gets her own tree in her room, but Sydnee hasn't had her own tree yet so Hallie decided to give her silver tree to Syd which Sydnee loves.

So Hallie needed a new tree and she picked a pink one which, I have to say, is gaudy but so dang cute! Then we spotted the hot pink--glittery, I might add-- ornaments and I just couldn't pass those up. We put it up just before I had to take her to preschool, and we were a few minutes late since we were putting the ornaments on... priorities!

A Visit with Mrs. Claus

Mrs. Claus visited Hallie's preschool yesterday! We haven't been to see Santa yet, and Hallie getting really worried that Santa might not know that she wants a learning laptop for Christmas, so when Mrs. Claus came into the room, Hallie said that she asked Mrs. Claus to tell Santa that she wanted a learning laptop for Christmas because her Mommy hadn't taken her to see Santa yet! Before leaving their class, Mrs. Claus had them make their own plates to put Santa's cookies on, they turned out so cute!

Dear Santa,

I really need a learning laptop for Christmas so my books can be placed back on their bookshelf, and my keyboard can be plugged back into my Daddy's computer, and so I can use my makeup as a toy again instead of my mouse. Although the makeup container works a lot better than the floral hair accessory I was using before. Thanks, Santa!

Love, Hallie

Gobble, Gobble and More Gobbling

Thanksgiving was at G&G Drake's house in MI and this year the Drake's from Tennessee (my aunt and uncle and cousins) came too which was a blast!

We drove up a few hours early to surprise my Mom and Dad so we (correction, Cam) could install their Christmas gift we got them: new surround sound speakers!). Once we arrived, we had the girls standing on the porch with tools in hand and when they answered the door they said, "We're here to fix your speakers!" It was rather cute!

Once the Tennessee Drakes got there, Hallie decided that my cousins, Sophie and Madelyne were going to be her best friends and minutes later they left to play together and I don't think I saw her again until it was time to leave!

They were attached at the hip and had a blast together, even Sydnee had fun with Sophie carrying her around.

The girls had a sleepover in Stacey's room complete with a movie and popcorn. Hallie and Sydnee loved being with the bigger girls.


And it's not a visit with Sophie without doing a craft of some sort so my Mom had the girls make Christmas cans for their teachers at school (which Hallie has already given her teachers since she couldn't wait any longer to give it to them!) and Sophie had the idea to make rings with some of the leftover buttons... 12 rings later, my fingers were numb from twisting wire but the rings turned out pretty cute!

We played lots of air hockey and games with my other cousin Colby.


We ate and ate and ate... it never stopped! Stacey referred to her overeating as her food baby which was kicking after our Thanksgiving dinner. Our dinner was so yummy and we topped it off with Cam's cheesecake. After our Thanksgiving dinner, we went to the theater to see Tangled, which was so cute.

We also celebrated Aunt Stacey's 17th birthday while we were there and the girls gave her some pretty bracelets.


And of course, it wouldn't be a visit to my parents without visiting the largest Christmas store in the world: Bronner's. The girls and I went with my Mom and Aunt Nathalie and her two girls. The store was crazy, but it was so fun to see a store so decked out in Christmas.

No need to drug our kids for the quietest ride home ever... Sophie and Madelyne did that for us, thanks for wearing them out!