Christmas Time In California

Whew......where do I start? The past few days have been a whirlwind of wrapping paper, work and 2 VERY excited kiddos! But we've survived and with the generosity of our fabulous family and friends, it was a major success!

We'll start with Christmas Eve. We joined Chris and Lisa (and company) along with Lisa's parents (Dennis and Leigh) and her brother and his wife (Todd and Delia) for a "traditional" X-mas dinner Mexican style. I can't even remember what it was we ate.....some sort of soup concoction but it was OH SO GOOD!!!!

Kaitlin and Merrick started the festivities with a cute photo op together by the tree. Those 2 are just adorable together.......constantly "talking" to each other and grabbing at each other's faces. We could have watched them all night!






Then we had an unexpected visit from Santa Claus (a.k.a. Dennis) and his bag was filled with goodies. Of course, Kellyn wanted nothing to do with him despite the fact that he came with gifts! And Tryg has finally begun to understand that Santa is quite the enigma......funny how he seems to be everywhere, yet always looks and sounds different. As soon as "Santa" entered the room, it took one look from Tryg and he said "that's Papa". But that didn't stop jolly St.Nick from doing what he was sent there to do.....hand out presents!!!

Kellyn would have never been in this shot if Aunt Lisa hadn't been there. Even with her, she was still starting to lose it! Kaitlin however.........well you know!



A mess full of wrapping paper and ribbon later, we were headed home for a reading of "Twas the Night Before Christmas" before bedtime. We did however, make sure there were cookies and milk set out for "Santa".....however, I turned my head for 1 second and Kellyn was already digging into the cookies. :-) And what she didn't get to finish, Chase did. We came down from putting them to bed to find an empty plate and his nose deep in the milk cup. MERRY CHRISTMAS CHASE!



The next morning, the girls woke up to a tree brimming with presents. I thought Kellyn's eyes were going to pop out of her. She even wanted to forgo breakfast in order to open presents. That was a first!!!





Kaitlin started getting tired towards the end.....very ready for her morning nap. And in went the thumb, it's just so cute!



After all the gifts were successfully opened (which took about 1/1000th the amount of time it did to buy and wrap them) we sat down for some yummy home made pancakes made with fresh berries inside. They were YUMMY as Kellyn kept saying! And breakfast wouldn't be complete without a compilation of "cheese's" from the entire family so here they are:






We ended breakfast with Kellyn's determination to feed daddy his orange juice. I'm such a sucker for daddy/daughter moments that I couldn't resist!!!



Once Kaitlin was down for her nap, it was clean up time (ugh!). THANK GOODNESS for the ever so clever cash register that Kellyn got for Christmas. It literally entertained her the entire morning so Jim and I could totally function as a team unit for clean up. We had everything de-tagged, taken out of boxes and the trash in recycle bags in less than an hour. WHEW!



You would think Christmas is over, right? WRONG!!!!!! The very next morning, my dad (Papa Duck) and his wife (Grand Jan) surprised the girls with another load of presents. Lots of cool stuff for their kitchen. A microwave, a mixer and a coffee maker. And they match perfectly (very important). She was in HEAVEN and proceeded to make us all cups of coffee and tea (with the addition of ketsup and mustard - yummy, right?). She was in her glory!




With everything said and done, I want to end with a very heartfelt (and adorable) message from Kellyn and Kaitlin.



Like I said......it was a major success and both Kell and Kait had SO MUCH FUN! I can't begin to imagine what it's going to be like next year. EEKS!