Concert

This is what's going on in both sides of my living room right now.

Christmas Morning

The rule in our house is that the children are not allowed to wake us up before 7am on Christmas morning. If they do, we add on that much more time to the wait time before they can open presents. The kids can get in their stocking and eat the candy but they have to wait for presents. Well, this year Darby did not abide by the rule ad woke us up at 6:40am. I could hear Brendan and Eva down the hall shouting, "Noooooo!" but it was done. So they had to wait until 7:20 to open things. By then Paige had only 5 pieces of candy left. :)

Brendan was our "elf" this year, thus hence the green hat. The funny thing was, he got so excited about everyone's present that he would forget to get the next present for the next person. :)

So here's the rundown.

Paige: Minnie dress up, Frozen figures (the biggest hit), a superhero cape from Grandma Caren (which was worn all morning) and a few dolls for the dollhouse

Darby: some magnetic dolls, a play toaster, doll clothes from Grandma Caren (holy cow - SO cute!), a Dorothy Barbie and a coloring book with glitter crayons

Eva (who gave the best reactions to her gifts): a jewelry making kit, watercolors and a sketch pad, fashion drawing stencils and metallic colored pencils, doll clothes from Grandma Caren (again - ADORABLE) and a few chapter books for the budding reader (she finished both yesterday - sigh)

Brendan: a model catapult, a book of science experiments, Legos from Grandma, a joke book and a Nerf gun (the gift was marked from Dad so Brendan leaped up to give him a big excited hug)

Jason: an iPad charging stand, new slippers, an awesome picture book from the International Space Station and a new Pilot Dr Grip pen (he lost/gave away all of his favorite pens)

Christine: chocolate covered cinnamon gummy bears, a new ipad case and a beautiful Willow Tree figurine depicting a father and his daughters

By the way, lack of pictures of me wasn't on purpose. I take the pictures of everyone and forget to get some with me in them.

And the Winns sent a family gift of a book and some audiobooks. It will be perfect for our road trip next week. 

The day was spent playing with the new toys, dressing dolls, assembling models, and making art and crafts. I talked to almost all of my extended family too.

It was a wonderful family day. Jason already wrote about the YUMMY dinner that we made. There are still lots of leftovers. I am totally having stuffing and mashed potatoes for lunch today. :)

Merry Christmas!

A little breather

Jason here.

The past few months have been a real bear in residency. Lots of tests, lots of reading, and the capstone mock oral board examination. Its been stressful! But all is well, I passed all my tests and did well on my mock oral board examination.

For all the work it has been, residency has been great. Preparing for boards and building your case for doing what you do fundamentally changes the way you look at things. In a board you have to present your case using evidence gained from studies. Its not enough to just quote some guru. I have come to realize how precious few arguments are made using actual data.

Anyways, its been a wonderful holiday break so far. I have had to work some half days including Christmas Eve and I will work a half day on New Years Eve as well, but that isn't so bad. I still have projects I am working on. January looks a bit crazy too, but I am not thinking about that right now. Its good to just sit, play with the family, play on the xbox a bit and just vegetate a bit.

Oh, and yesterday I took a gigantic culinary leap and prepared a turkey for Christmas dinner. Christine doesn't care for turkey, so she said if I wanted turkey, then I would have to cook it myself. So I did. I made a bag roasted turkey with dry rub over a bed of onions. Eva helped as well (she loves to help out in the kitchen). I basically just followed the directions on the box. The NY Times has a good section on carving a turkey, and I have that figured out as well. It was a lot of work, but it was fun. The kids liked it. Christine pretended to like it which was good enough for me. And we have enough left over turkey for the rest of the month. Bonus!

Christmas Eve

The night before Christmas we like to read Luke 2 and act out the nativity. Using the Little People toys is the easiest way to do it. However, this year the kids were so excited that things went awry. After the umpteenth time of telling everyone "Take turns", "Don't fight" and "Sit down", we gave up on the acting out and simply read from the scriptures.

After that we opened our family gift from Grandma Nancy and Grandpa Jerry. Grandma had made all the  children blankets to match their rooms. They are lovely. The kids all snuggled down with them for the night.

I might also add that they make excellent blanket forts. We've had a few of those today.  :)

Christmas Cookies

Every year I love to decorate cookies at Christmastime with the kids. This year I got ambitious and made the dough myself (chilled overnight and everything). They were perfectly shaped and really tasty. I let the kids go to town decorating them. I wish I had purchased more candies for the gingerbread man-shaped ones. They had fun and got to eat one each before we wrapped up the rest to give to neighbors and friends. This is the first year we didn't have a major frosting mess. They must be growing up. :)

Disney on Ice: Frozen

Back in July, a friend of mine posted that Disney on Ice was coming to Fayetteville and performing Frozen. She had a code for early tickets. I knew my girls would LOVE it so I bought tickets, planning on surprising them. I bought three tickets (Eva, Darby and me, figuring Paige was too little to sit still). The show wasn't coming until this December so I have had this secret for months. As time got closer, Eva came home with a permission slip stating that her class was going to a matinee performance of, you guessed it, Disney on Ice. And it happened to be the same day we would have gone. Bummer. But I figured I could take Paige and hope for the best.

Last week I told the girls we were going on a date. Eva came home raving about the show and the little girls were very interested so I figured my status as Coolest Mom would soon be cemented. I didn't tell them where we were going, only to dress warmly. When we pulled up, Darby still had no idea. That is, until we walked into the lobby and there was Frozen memorabilia everywhere. She was so excited that she jumped up and down and twirled. Paige still didn't really get it until the show started. Mickey and Minnie were in the opening portion and she went crazy, waving at them and clapping.

It was a wonderful night. They loved it and I enjoyed watching them love it. They will only be little once. The show was very well done and the props were very impressive. The skating was great and the girls enjoyed the flips and spins. They danced to the Music and Paige belted out "Let It Go" when it came on.

However, it was a late night and they were both so tired. They fell asleep in the car.