No matter how late we stay up tonight to ring in the new year, I will be getting up at 7:40am, turning on my computer with my credit card and issues of Creating Keepsakes in hand and I will be ordering this kit.
Okay, so Christmas with the Harris' was actually on Saturday, but I just got the pictures uploaded a few minutes ago so that is why it is out of order. Please excuse me!
The boys loved their new ride on toys and spent most of the day riding them around and crashing into each other. The day was also filled with other fun activities like:
Neil and Wade decided to wrestle and prove their manliness. Neil dominated most of the match (sorry Wade!) but Neil was getting pretty tired by the end. Luckily our son saved him by crying thinking that Daddy was being hurt. And Marilyn guarded the TV!
The girls decorated gingerbread houses although they were actually made with graham crackers, they came out really cute!
We also did English crackers, a new tradition started last year. We had a lot of fun with them now that we know how to get them to make the pop sound. We look so cute in our paper crowns!
Today while I tried to recover my house from Christmas, Zach tried to sweep the kitchen floor. In the process he knocked the tree topper off of the kitchen island and it broke into tiny pieces. It was a rough day and now starts the search for a tree topper as awesome as this one was!
The tree topper was sitting on the kitchen island because Neil had not yet had a chance to put it back onto the tree since Sunday night when a bird flew into our house. Neil tried to trap it by throwing a small blanket onto the tree when the bird landed on Tinker Bell. But when he pulled the blanket off (no matter how carefully) it pulled things off with it like the tree topper and the Happy Anniversary ornament that no longer has a head on Minnie. That can hopefully be fixed with glue. 
We had a great Christmas Day, with the festivities being at our house this year. It was nice to not have to drive around with four kids. And Neil enjoyed cooking for everyone. The girls had a great time opening up all of their gifts. The biggest hits were Bailey the puppy that grows and even knows Madison's name. And Kaley with her first doll house.
The boys had more fun messing with everyone's presents than anything else. Although they did get quite a few things that they either could hardly wait for us to get them out of the box for them to start playing with or they fought over them! Like the Sesame Street guitar!
This was Christmas before the real chaos began! Unfortunately, we do not have a real fire place which seemed odd to not have one going on Christmas morning. So we turned on channel 5 which had Christmas music with an HD shot of a fire. Almost just like the real thing!
The girls wanted to leave cookies out for Santa so when they woke up in the morning they were surprised to see a note left for them.
Merry Christmas to everyone! We hope you are having as much fun (and chaos) as we are.
We had the opportunity to go to Disneyland with our friends Amanda & Brian yesterday after church. I dropped the kids off with my mom & dad (thank you!) and we headed off to the Merriest Place on Earth. First we had to get lunch and so we went to Fuddrucker's, one of our favorite places. Yumm!
Then we went to Disneyland where we went on lots of rides like: Pirates, Thunder Mountain, Splash Mountain, and Toy Story (I beat Amanda!). We shopped and I got some more ornaments for my tree and we even got a cut-in-line pass because of some non-rule-following shoppers. So after the fireworks, which were amazing, we went on the Haunted Mansion and Indiana Jones.
To end our day, since by midnight we were finally starting to get hungry after the huge lunch we had, we stopped at the Hat in Brea and had chili fries and onion rings. We didn't get home until 2am, but we had an unforgettable day of fun and great friends! I love Disneyland at Christmas, which is why I try to recreate it at home!
If only the view from my kitchen window was this incredible every day, if so maybe I would do a lot more dishes!