Merry Christmas!

What a wonderful Christmas we had this year! Tommy, Lucy, and Johnny were all at perfect ages and each one believed in the magic of christmas! The weeks leading to Christmas, Patrick and I answered many of Lucy's questions about Santa and did our best explaining to Tommy how Santa could go to every house in the whole world in 24hours! At 8 he's getting to smart for us!
It was also fun letting Santa know what the kids wanted, especially the days just before christmas. Their lists changed daily and they had a new item that they "really wanted". This is tough when they believe Santa knows and will bring it!

We celebrated the season with many gatherings of friends and family! We had good friends for dinner the week before Christmas. This dinner was supposed to be 2 weeks before xmas but our household was struck with a horrible cold/cough so we had to postpone it. We love getting together with our friends, they now all have kids and its fun to see them all play together. We've all realized our days of cocktails and board games (trivia, pictionary,etc) have been drastically changed and we are all just trying to stay awake long enough to enjoy each others company :). We went to Zoo Lights at the Oakland Zoo with our neighbors. This was a fun night and got us all in the xmas spirit!! My family has a couple different dinners/parties to prepare for the holidays. It was nice seeing my grandma, aunts, uncles and cousins. My grandma is so sweet and brings hand knitted hats/blankets for all the kids. Such an amazing woman!

Christmas Eve we spend with the Ryken Family. This year they all came to our house for dinner. The kids had to patiently wait for dinner to be over before we could open presents, not an easy task for an 8,6, and 3 year old! They did great! The kids love spending time with their uncles, its fun to see. Uncle Chris surprised the kids with a turtle! So now our "zoo" has yet one more pet!

2am christmas morning I hear "Mom is it morning yet???" its was Lucy at my bed! She could not sleep! after spending time in our bed tossing and turning she went back to her room only to return at 3am! finally her dad went and layed with her. 6 am I was awoken by Johnny who then ran to his brother and sisters room shouting "it's christmas!! wake up!!"

Santa was good this year! All three kids got new bikes! Tommy got a new nintendo DSI (santa added this to his sleigh at 10pm christmas eve night because his old DS broke that night!! Thank god for his uncle and dad who helped Santa and went to Toys R Us who only had 1 left!!!). Lucy got a guitar a barbie townhouse and more barbies than you can imagine! And Johnny got finger skateboards and ramps plus Super Mario Brothers items :)!

2 days after christmas I can now sit and breath! We can now reflect on this crazy weekend and smile! The kids are happily playing with all their new toys and so far everyone is getting along! I am sitting here typing when I should be cleaning... oh well...it all gets done! :).

We hope you had a wonderful Christmas Season! and are ready for 2011 !! I'm sure not ready to say goodbye to 2010 yet!