Christmas Day!

Be forewarned: LOTS of pictures!!
I probably should have edited them down or split into two posts but this is our family's scrapbook so I wanted to remember all the littles' sweet expressions on this special day.

On Christmas Eve the littles set out cookies for Santa and the conversation went something like this:
Grace: There, that's perfect. Hudson, quit touching the cookies!
Hudson: I like cookies.
Grace: These are for Santa NOT for you. Hmmm...but how is he going to know they're for him? I know! I'll stick one of these Santa pictures in the straw and he'll know they're for him.
Of course when Grace wasn't looking, Hudson snuck over there and took a big chomp out of one of the cookies! HA!Lance read The Night Before Christmas to the littles and then it was off to bed...And in the morning...
{because it was raining pretty bad the night before and we couldn't sprinkle the reindeer food on our lawn, we had to put it in a little dog bowl for Rudolph & his buddies...they still ate it though!}Santa came!!!!!!!!!
{That Santa! He's kind of clumsy and he always leaves his footprints all over the place!!}He ate all the cookies and left sweet notes for the littles. And yes, he raided mama's stash of vintage cards to leave his notes on {sneaky Santa!}Hudson wasted no time eating Santa's leftover cookie bites!! That's my boy! He has such a sweet tooth!After finding Super Belly & Cookie Rooftop's last location of the year...they were sitting on the piano right by the Baby Jesus in a Manger that Hudson made at school...it was time to open gifts!We opened gifts from sweet cousins...thank you Carson!And then we opened gifts from Santa...the excitement was off the charts this year!Yes, Santa brought the highly-anticipated-and-wished-for American Girl doll for Grace AND a dinosaur Dragon for Hudson!!More sweet squeals and it's-just-what-I-always-wanted over the Lalaloopsy Treehouse...Of course there was frustration over bows that don't come off right away...But lots of joy over lions and tigers and bears, oh my!All was fine and dandy...UNTIL.........too excited to see if Santa had indeed filled their stockings, the little pumpkin grabbed her stocking and instead of it coming off the hook, the CAST IRON stocking holder came crashing down with the stocking smashing her right in the face...This was AFTER all the bleeding finally stopped and we had gooped up her eye with neosporin...OUCH is right!Talk about mama guilt. I should have known better about the darn holders. They are now in the trash. They didn't even make it to the goodwill pile - the thought of the same thing happening to another child was too heavy on my conscience.

Thank you Noonie for making a house call that morning so that we could avoid the ER. And thank you Jesus for watching over the little pumpkin - I know it could have been much worse had it hit her IN the eye.

Thankfully, she recovered pretty quickly...she said her new doll Emily helped her :)After everything settled down, she still wanted to see what was in her stocking, so the merriment went on...Hudson's turn!
That $5 Lion King phone has been the most played with toy...figures!

Oh, and you see those cute dino undies???? That's right! We've started the potty training business.

And if you're curious about the little abominable snowman...........................Hudson is CRAZY about the "snow monster"!!! HA! Yes, he loves that thing - no clue why, but he does. And..........he loves to antagonize his sister with the snow monster since she's scared of "the real one" - little brothers!Santa was very good to Mama & Daddy too...seems Santa must have been in a western state of mind since both Lance and I asked for and got boots!All in all, it was a wonderful day full of memories we'll never forget...The big kids are enjoying the toys as much, if not more, than the little kids...But, I saved my favorite part of Christmas Day for a post all its own...I'll be back soon to share. For now, I hope you had a beautiful Christmas and made some sweet memories to treasure in years to come...