One Thousand Two Hundred and Thirty-Eight

That's how many pictures we took over Christmas break. That's the main reason why we haven't blogged about Christmas yet. 1,238 pictures takes a little while to sort through! I've broken them up by event though, so I'll start with Christmas here at home with just our kids. The other posts will come over time. I figure that if I get them up by Valentine's Day I'll be doing okay. After all, Christmas wasn't even a month ago, and the kids and I have only been home for just under two weeks. Although when we did get to town, we spent most of the weekend away with family in Saratoga Springs and Park City, so we were only at our apartment for a few hours before picking Spencer up at the airport on Monday. Things have stayed busy since we got home but we're getting back into a routine. I'm happy to report that everyone is feeling mostly well and all the luggage is unpacked! =)

We don't claim this to be a beautiful tree but we did want a picture of it.

New pajamas from Great Grandmama Gorden!

It was fun to watch the kids open things and get so excited. Adelaide is really into Tinkerbell right now and this is a picture of her opening one of the dolls, Rosetta. Below she just got new princess shoes. This girl totally has a thing for shoes! She was so beyond excited about these. There are six and they each have a princess on them with a bow and some other fancies. She immediately put a pair on and would take a few steps then realize there was another pair and quickly scramble to get the current pair off and a new pair on. This happened for hours. It was pretty funny. In the beginning she just looked overwhelmed that she hadn't got them all tried on yet. For quite a while she was into whatever Gorden wanted her to be into and really liked to play in the dirt and get dirty, but always wanted a bow in her hair. Now she's definitely more of a girly girl than she was six months ago. She still loves getting her hair fixed and always wants her nails painted and always has to wear her fancy shoes and is usually carrying around a baby doll that needs to be reswaddled.

Gorden is very into Kung Fu and Star Wars and sword fighting and everybody is either a bad guy or a good guy and he's always trying to kill the bad guys. Sometimes I remind him that he's just pretending and he always sighs and says, "I know, Mom." He loves all Super Heroes and seems to know about them all. I have no idea how. He still loves wearing his cape and undies and tennis shoes (except he Always refers to them as his "Nike's" and that he has to wear his Nike's because he runs faster and jumps higher. Where does he learn this??). After he gets his pajamas on at night he has to put his tennis shoes back on again before bed so he can jump high while he's still awake he says. I think his mind is going non stop with trying to beat the bad guys the entire time he's awake in a day. Some nights I have to tuck him in real tight and touch his face and remind him to slow down because he's still talking ninety miles an hour about Yoda, Obe Wan Kenobi, & Clone Troopers, or Batman, or Tai Lung, Master Shifu, & Po or .....the list could go on and on. If he does take a second to slow down before bed he remembers he has a huge shelf of books and continues to bring me one after another to read to him prolonging bed time. I do think he really enjoys reading though and it isn't just a ploy.

So that was Christmas, phase 1, and it was great!