Christmas 2011

With Ah-Gong, Ah-Ma, and J in town, we definitely had a fun Christmas this year.

CHRISTMAS LIGHTS
We headed to Windcrest to see lights again this year.  It was great!  The kids got out of their car seats to see all the lights while we (slowly) drove around the neighborhood.  We also enjoyed some hot cocoa during our visit.  We love this tradition...but honestly, I think we could drive around our own neighborhood because the fun part is getting out of the car seats!

Here's a video of one of our fave houses every year...they really do a good job of changing things up each year!

GINGERBREAD HOUSES

We started the weekend off with our annual gingerbread house contest (I really should re-name it since we use graham crackers to build the houses).  This year I got the kids a gingerbread house to decorate on their own while the adults built with graham crackers.  The kids seriously over-decorated the house, but they had a blast doing it...it was definitely colorful!  Elina loved squeezing the icing all by herself.  Besides decorating a house, Elina deemed herself the official judge for the contest.  She put on sunglasses and went around asking us questions about our houses.  It was quite comical!

Here were the results--

Most Improved (me): I had to do a lot of work to redeem myself from last year...after "the shed incident."  I thought I did a pretty good job, don't you?  I think the creative juices were flowing this year.  I know my roof isn't solid, but, seriously, did you see mine last year?!?  This is definitely an improvement!

Most Creative (J): J was really creative this year.  She used lots of different candy and the house turned out so cute!

Most Clever (B): B had some difficulties this year...only because he was trying to re-create our new house.  It was a valiant effort, but just took too much time.  I just thought it was cute that Elina thought to use the word "clever" to describe his house.

Most Decorated (Elina and Eli): This was the perfect word to describe their house!

HOT POT

We enjoyed a yummy hot pot on Christmas Eve because it was cold, windy, and rainy out....perfect weather for a hot pot!  Unfortunately, B and Elina are not big fans of this style of eating, so it wasn't as yummy for them.

CHRISTMAS EVE PJs
The night before Christmas, the kids put out cookies for Santa and carrots for the reindeer.  When Elina put the carrots out, she noticed that one of the carrots was extra big.  So she left Santa a note telling him to make sure that the reindeer share the carrots and not fight over the bigger one.  It was pretty cute.

Then the kids opened up their first gift, which is always matching Christmas pajamas.  This year's theme was snowmen and the kids looked cute!

CHRISTMAS DAY
This year I made 2 breakfast casseroles for Christmas morning--Emeril's Sausage Breakfast Casserole (our usual delicious one) and Paula Deen's Baked French Toast.  Sorry, Paula, but I think the sausage one won out this time.

We opened gifts around 9:30am and the kids were in heaven.  Evie really knew how to tear her gifts open and after she opened every gift, she would say, "Whoa!"  Her fave gift had to be her new Sigg bottle.  See, her older siblings each have their own and she's always trying to steal their bottles, so J bought her a new one and she wanted to use it immediately!

Elina loved passing out gifts to other people this year.  Her fave gift was the pogo stick from Aunt A.  It's a pogo stick that has a base, so you can learn the balance first.  After you can bounce on it with the base, you can take the base off and take off with it.  Not sure when Elina will get to that point though.

Eli was obsessed with the first gift he opened (new Leapfrog Tag books) and couldn't put them down.  Eli definitely had too many favorite toys to name, but if we had to name one, it would probably be the Mater Shake 'n Go truck.

One cool gift that Elina gave to everyone this year was a book she created herself.  It was entitled Summer Fun 2011 and it was all about the highlights of her summer.  We sent it in to be bound and the end-product was so cute.  I think we'll be doing this at the end of every summer from now on because it's a great way for the kids to remember all the fun things they did.  Check out a few pages...

  

  

Another neat gift was a set of presents from V and J to me and B.  They were nice enough to give us a bunch of gift certificates that are only redeemable in Austin--their babysitting services, movie passes, and our favorite restaurant in Austin.  The plan is, they want us to leave the kids with them one day so that we can have a date in Austin.  Wasn't that nice??

My dad (Ah-Gong) has been obsessed with Angry Birds lately, so the kids got him this big Angry Birds plush doll.  My dad's reaction was great!

The rest of Christmas Day was spent playing with new Christmas toys.  Eli built a firestation out of legos, Elina baked "yummy" cookies with her new Easy Bake Oven, and Elina couldn't stop bouncing on her pogo stick!  It was a great day!

Here was the aftermath--

And here are our annual wrapping paper pics--

OUTINGS
I think this was the most non-food-related outings we've ever had with my parents during one visit.  The day after Christmas, we took them on Elina's tour of Mission San Jose.  My parents and J really enjoyed it.  For added fun, we also searched for a letterbox while we were there.  My dad claims that letterboxing is for people who have nothing better to do....although he thought it was neat that people went to so much trouble to hide letterboxes and write clues for them.  I think this stamp was my favorite so far.  It was a handcarved image of Mission San Jose.  Beautiful!

The next day we headed to the zoo during Evie's nap (J stayed home).  We did the bird tour that we took when we last visited with Elina's 1st grade class.  The animal highlight for this trip was the hippos!  They were really active and yawned, had the fish clean inside their mouths, and swam around.  It was awesome!

We also found a letterbox outside of the zoo.  Elina said this was the most adventurous one because we had to climb up a brushy hill get the letterbox out of a "cave."  This was a neat handcarved tiger stamp.

The following day we all went bowling.  We didn't get any pictures because we were always managing children, but it was a really fun time!  Elina and Eli both used those kiddie ramps and Elina managed to break a hundred for the first time with a score of 104!  [My sisters and I have wonderful memories of bowling with my parents when we were younger.  Besides working long hours at my parents' restaurant, there really wasn't much else that we would all do together back then...but on the weekends, we would go bowling after work and close the bowling alley down.  The owner there knew us well and we loved going there almost every weekend.  That's where I learned my hook (although I don't really hook the ball anymore)...where I bowled my first 200 point game and earned myself my first bowling ball named "Black Beauty."  I know it's corny, but bowling brings back fond family memories.]

Well, that's our Christmas in a big nutshell.  Lots of family, fun, food, and good times.  Hope your Christmas was just as wonderful!