Christmas!

The boys opened a few gifts on Christmas Eve (they get so overwhelmed that we find it helpful to space things out a bit. Plus, who doesn't love opening at least one gift early??!!).

One of their presents was a kung fu instructional video from their cousins Logan and Sela. (Logan studies Karate herself, and was named student of the week at her dojo. Congratulations Logan!). They are practicing their stances here. It got crazier once they got to blocks and kicks!

I love the looks on their faces.



Once the boys went to bed, our stockings were hung by the chimney with care, and St. Nick cleaned off the cookie plate and the milk and left the boys a nice note, along with PRESENTS!!

But first, upon waking up Christmas morning, they were just excited to have their Christmas doughnuts (by request) with the wished-for snow still giving us a White Christmas outside:

Lucas surveys the two gifts from Santa:

And Josh makes sure Sammy gets his stocking stuffers:

The boys inspected and emptied their stockings:






And then got down to the real order of business -- gifts from Santa:




It's the remote controlled monster truck Josh asked for!




And a shark truck for Lukie too!

Much fun was had with the trucks!

The light sabers were a HUGE hit:





Though eventually Josh ended up with both of them (the hip holster and the one in action):



Lucas finally got the hang of unwrapping gifts, after beginning the morning pulling confetti-sized pieces of paper at a time:

And received a cuddly polar bear!

Josh also received a Nintendo DS and a couple of games, which was excited to try out:

As if all of that weren't enough (not to mention the many gifts not photographed), Josh received a new skateboard (now that he is ready to try a full-sized board):







Which meant Lucas inherited the Spiderman beginner board:







AND, both of them received new BIKES! Josh has moved up to a 20" with trick pegs, and Lucas has graduated from tricyle to two- (or four-, with training wheels) wheeler!







And of course Josh had to give Lucas' bike a test run (with a power assist from Lucas too!):




Thank you VERY MUCH for all the wonderful gifts, and we hope you are also having a very MERRY CHRISTMAS!!

Enchanted Christmas

Yesterday, it was so warm Josh wore shorts when he came downtown to meet me for lunch. (His favorite part -- the building's metal detectors). His Christmas wish was for snow. We told him that, although they were predicting that it would get much colder by Christmas day, it was going to be a dry cold and no snow for our first Texas Christmas.

Well, we were wrong. It is snowing like crazy today. Josh got his Christmas wish.
[UPDATE: According to the news, this is the first white Christmas for North Texas in 83 YEARS!! Josh really has the magic wishing touch!]

The snow is not that heavy yet in this photo, but the wind was very strong. When it blew right in your face, you couldn't even breathe. It was pretty the way the snow blew around.



Snowball fight!






Lucas wouldn't look straight up because of the wind, so this was the best I got:



Beautiful snowy Sammy:

Our Christmas Tree

It turns out that if you move halfway across the country, to a warmer climate, you shouldn't expect them to grow the same kind of trees there. Our annual trip to tree farms to choose and cut our own noble fir had to be modified this year. There are no fir trees grown here. We did find that we could buy one pre-cut (and shipped to TX), but to cut our own, we almost exclusively had to go with a pine tree. But we did find a tree farm not too far away that had Blue Ice trees. I really like the color.

Here is Josh helping us cut our tree:



Even Lucas could help this year:



Josh hangs the first ornament:



And Lucas hangs the second:



Honestly, our tree was trimmed in record time this year. The boys really helped, and it looks great.



The full effect:

Here's our birthday girl modeling her gift t-shirt and first laying eyes on that beautiful handmade cake!



Make a wish!



Josh's personally hand-picked gift (from his school's gift sale): a flowery screwdriver. "Because she doesn't have one." She loved it!




The next day, we headed out to Grapevine, Texas, to ride the North Pole Express and see Santa:

Lucas was unimpressed.



Here comes Santa!

Which, as usual, leads Lucas to cling to me for dear life.

Goofball.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch ...

The boys were busy preparing Gammy's birthday cake!

The finished product: