Christmas Pics

Santa was extremely good to us again this year.

Despite her sheer terror at the mere mention of his name, Santa brought Mallory her much wanted baby doll along with proper baby gear.
Mal even has tested the baby's bed. Yep, it's pretty sturdy!

Drew got some cool boy stuff along with his desired underwear and video game.

Elizabeth received her Nintendo DS and has already acquired quite an arsenal of games.

Ross received lots of games for his DS and PlayStation along with some other cool boy stuff.

After my many threats of "I think you've just earned yourself some coal this year," Santa kind of played along with me. He brought some coal bubble gum to the older three. Perfect. Not too mean, but kind of gets the point across.

After Drew chewed some of his, it looked like he was Dick Van Dyke's apprentice in Mary Poppins.

And then it got spilled all into the carpet. Hooray!

The crew revelling in some Christmas bliss. They even let Daddy use some of their new gifts!

While we are a pretty practical kind of family, we splurged with some of the generous Christmas money we received from some family members ,and we joined most of the free world in purchasing a Wii. Can I just say, how awesome!? We have had a blast with it! The kids are usually the ones asking when do they get to play. Edward and I have had a lot of friendly competitions. Drew annihilates most of his opponents in boxing. We have all been so sore the last few days. Lots of fun.

Why Men Shouldn't Wrap Gifts:

This was the gift my big brother Aaron presented my little brother Ben. "Tape?! I don't need no stinking tape!" Take a wad a wrapping paper, twist it all around the gift, rubber-band it in place, and VIOLA!
And this beauty was created by my dear husband. He really was trying to be helpful in all the bustle the day we left for Christmas with his family. I came home to find this little jewel. Let me just say this photo doesn't do this gift justice. It bothered me so much I had to redo it. I was sorry I didn't take an "after" picture to show the difference between our wrapping jobs.

Stephanie, The Movie Critic

Our family very rarely goes to the movie theater. This is due to several reasons. 1.) It is expensive to take a crew of 6 to a movie. And 2.) our movie theater is pretty measly, and I hate to pay the admission for a mediocre movie experience.

But during our fun-filled two weeks of vacation, we went to see not one, but two movies! We used some family Christmas money from my Granny to see one we've all been wanting to see. And I found $15 in my purse left over from our Christmas money that somehow I didn't spend. Surprising.

The movie we had all been waiting to see was Bedtime Stories. LOVED IT! An award winning movie it is not, but it was so fun! Great story line, funny (I do love Adam Sandler), clean, it appealed to us all. We were not disappointed, and I was glad we spent the money to go see it. I recommend it.

Now, two thumbs WAY DOWN for The Tale of Despereaux. I was SO disappointed! Edward stayed back with Mallory (lucky him), so it was just me and the big three. Ross and Elizabeth have been reading the book (with the hope of finishing it over Christmas, but that didn't happen!) so they really wanted to see it. It certainly did not live up to the hype! The kids liked it alright, but I thought it was a real snoozer. Have you ever started a book that you just couldn't get into? That's how I felt with this movie. I kept waiting for the exciting part, but it never came in my opinion. I was bummed that I wasted the money.

And there you have it.