Merry Christmas!!

Even though Christmas goes by so fast and we have so many places to go, it is by far my favorite holiday. Not only is it fun to give (and receive ;) gifts and spend time with family and friends, but it is a Birthday celebration for Jesus - who ultimately gives the greatest gift of all!! This year was no exception...the girls got more presents than I could possibly list. Many were duplicates or multiples, but they liked it all anyway. Some of my favorite gifts included her Penguin (story to follow), an Easy Bake Oven, dress up clothes (TinkerBell and Cinderella) and doll beds with custom bedding (handmade by GG)!!

Ok, here is the story with the penguin. If you remember back to last summer, when we went to visit Teri in Cincinnati, we went to the Newport Aquarium and Aly got a stuffed penguin. Not long after we got home she lost it. We tried to replace it with another penguin, but it was not the same for her. Every night when we prayed before bed she wanted to pray for her penguin to be safe and come home...so I arranged for that to happen. Some how I got her to come up with the idea to ask Santa to find him and bring him home to her for Christmas. Then, I asked Teri to go and buy us a new one (the exact same penguin) for me to wrap up for her. I wrote a letter from Santa explaining that he 'found him and took him back to his workshop to give him a bath'. She knew Santa was going to come through because on Christmas morning that is all she talked about! I was planning on making her wait to open that one last, but every present she opened, that was not him, she said "I wonder were my penguin is!?!?" She was sooooooooo excited to see it that she just kept looking and hugging the penguin for like 10 minutes. She has not separated from it since! Here are some pictures of her with the penguin and the rest of our Christmas festivities!!

Hannah wasn't really to interested in opening presents...she just wanted to play!!

Her shoes are hard to see in this picture, but she LOVED them...she only time she took them off for 3 days was to sleep!!

Tinkerbell and Cinderella

Here are some from Christmas Eve also (Hannah would NOT cooperate for pictures...I was NOT trying leaving her out on purpose):
Sprinkling the reindeer food we made on the lawn...

It was definitely a great holiday!!