Christmas Day

Okay, here's the Christmas Day post.  I know, it's now mid-February.  Still, here are some Christmas Day pictures and stories.  Enjoy!

When we asked Elijah what he wanted for Christmas, the only thing he told us was this:

Love the boy.

The two gifts that he might have liked better than Lucky Charms were:
Wii Sports Resort, from Grandma and Grandpa (seriously, a cool game):

and these:

Nerf Swords!  They were such successful gifts, in fact, that we later bought 3 more swords.  Now all of us have one, so we can have family sword fights.

Oh.  An unexpected fantastic Christmas purchase:  a $1 stocking stuffer.  We bought each of the kids a $1 stuffed animal from Target.  Elijah fell in love with his koala bear.  He talks about koala bear's soft ears.  He draws pictures of it and then posts the pictures on the walls.  He takes koala bear to bed with him.  In fact, koala bear has pretty much replaced Care Bear as the sleep comfort item.   Who would have thought, right?  Best $1 purchase ever.

The kids bought each other gifts, which was cute.  We took each of them to the dollar store and they bought each other (and us) $1 gifts.  Elijah bought Tank a sword that lit up and made noises, which was cool.  Originally Tank liked it better, but it died in under a week:

Of course, Tank opened it first, so he didn't really care about his other gifts.  Which was fine.

Here Elijah presents me with a gift he created a few weeks before Christmas.  It's a drawing on a piece of paper and a bunch of junk mail folded up:

Elijah loves to give.

I opened this present, which was the book I asked for:  a collection of CS Lewis works.  It's a beautiful hard-bound book, and I love it:

I opened it and Tank said, "Oh!  A boring book!"  You can see how enthused he looks in the picture.

Instead of buying each other gifts, Rob and I pooled our gift money and bought a digital photo frame.   We LOVE it.  Best idea ever.

The coolest gift Miciah got was a bunch of Barbie stuff from the neighbors.  It's hundreds of dollars worth of Barbies, accessories, clothes, a doll house, a carriage, etc.  They were going to give it to Good Will, and then they thought of Miciah.  Additionally, we got Miciah this stuffed duck, since she's obsessed with ducks:

There were other presents, of course, but it was a relatively small Christmas.  This was on purpose.  Still, for all our efforts to keep Christmas "small," Rob and I realized how easy it is to spend money on the holiday.  We kept to our budget, but it was somewhat shocking to review all the money and where it was going.  Hundreds of dollars worth of a Small Christmas.  Heaven forbid we ever have a Big Christmas!

It was a perfect day.  We watched movies and set up the new race track and played Barbies and Miciah's Magic Fairy Garden Game, and had sword fights, and ate coffee cake.  Life doesn't get much better than that.

We took a video of everyone in the family saying "Thank You":