Christmas 2007

Christmas this year was very relaxing and fun for the whole family. We kept things pretty low key and just tried to enjoy the season. I enjoyed shopping for the kids this year and only bought a few things online that were considerably cheaper online. It was a fun and exciting morning for the kids and they all enjoyed the presents they received. My parents came over in the morning to spend the day with us. Kitty was the last one we were waiting for to wake up and my parents were already on their way over here before she woke up that we just waited until Grandma & Grandpa arrived before we even let the kids downstairs to where the presents were. They emptied their stockings first to open the presents that were in there but I was surprised that they didn't eat any of the candy until evening time! Too much excitement with the toys I guess. We had the kids take turns opening each present one at a time so it took a little while to get through everything. I think that it's good though for the kids to see what each other received. Once we finished with the Santa presents though, we let them open the presents under the tree at the same time.

After we were finished opening the Santa presents, we ate breakfast of breakfast casserole, cinnamon rolls and oranges. Grandma S became the unofficial toy opener. I sent one of the kids to her to open one of the toy packages because I was handing out some of the presents from under the tree and then the kids kept going to her to open their toys when they saw her with her hands empty.

M&M got a lot of clothes that actually all fit her and a nice new winter coat. She also received some horses which she still loves to play with.

Luke Skywalker got a pop-out lightsaber which he has been wanting for a long time as well as a Star Wars transformer of the Death Star/Darth Vader.

Blondie received some My Little Pony toys and a ballerina Barbie whose skirt twirls around.

Kitty received a Dora doll and some My Little Pony toys as well.

The girls together received some Littlest Pet Shop toys which they all love playing with. All of us received some Nerf dart guns so we can have some shooting matches in the house together (if we can ever get things cleaned up from Christmas).

My big present to DH was a surprise trip to Orlando, FL. I have been thinking about DH & I taking a trip for some time now, since I don't have any nursing babies right now and it makes it a little easier now that my parents live not too far from us. So I talked with my parents about watching the kids for a few days and they agreed to it. I was up in the air for a long time about where we should go/do (i.e. cruise, Hawaii, California) so when I heard that Tan & Chez aren't planning on retiring in Florida, I decided that it might be fun to go there and visit them a little and do some sightseeing on our own. Plus I know that there is a lot to do there and my parents & a few siblings have been there somewhat recently. So I decided to plan a trip for January since the kids are out of school for most of the month and I won't be too pregnant to enjoy myself. My dad was able to find a 1-bedroom timeshare that was available near Orlando for the dates I was looking at and then I found a relatively good deal on some plane tickets for us. We will be leaving January 11th and coming back on the 16th. The only people that knew anything about it were my parents since I had to make sure they could watch the kids for us. Needless to say, DH was quite surprised and it looks like everything should be fine for him taking a couple of days off of work (when he checked the dates there was nothing scheduled on his work calendar which is unusual).

This will be our first trip for just the two of us since before we had M&M and we are very excited about it - it will be like a second honeymoon since we couldn't really afford much of one when we got married. It was hard for me to keep this a secret and there were several times where a subject was brought up that I had a hard time keeping from smiling too much because it hit a little too close to the mark. I was also very nervous because this is not a cheap surprise and I was unsure on how DH would react to it. After all is said and done though, I think that we will have a great time and will wonder why it took us so long to take a trip.

The kids are very excited about having a sleepover at Grandma & Grandpa's house. They were a bit confused on when we were going and they kept thinking that when we were going over to Grandma & Grandpa's the day after Christmas that we were going to be leaving them there and going on our trip to Florida. They keep asking me how many more days there are until we leave...

This was one of Heath's presents to me. I told him that we better be having a boy then because I don't want one of our daughters being called a geek. For those of you who are not computer savvy, this is a takeoff of the Intel logo seen on a lot of computers. Another one of DH's gifts for me was a gift certificate to the restaurants on Temple Square. We'll have to wait until after our trip to Florida to take advantage of that one though. I told DH that it's a good thing that we both didn't get expensive presents for each other since I'm not sure if we could have afforded that (plus my gift to him is more of a gift for both of us - it was just a surprise for him).