This is the BEST Christmas EVER! (again)

I do believe that our children say this every year (which is a huge relief because Santa doesn't always get them what's on their lists). This year, though, Brayton said he would really see if there is a Santa because he wasn't telling anyone what he wanted for Christmas and Santa would just know. We passed! Even with a few flubs on our part. . . First, Santa wrote a little note explaining why the boys weren't getting what was on their list. This morning when I remembered to have the boys sign a card for their dad, Taite noticed that the same stationary was laying out on my desk and I didn't flip it over fast enough so he wouldn't see it. Secondly, they still haven't made the connection as to why we couldn't park in the garage yesterday, nor have they thought about how Santa got the game table in his sleigh :~)

In any event, we had a few AWESOME games of Lazer Tag and we were all pretty good at it. We did make Brayton so he had to get hit the same amount of times as us to get "done" but in hindsight, that may not have been the fairest. . . We can always change that next time :-) Chris and I played a game of air hockey and pool too (the boys were playing their new Pokemon Gameboy game with their new connector cable). Chris beat me at both games, but it was still really fun! It makes me want even more to get the loft built in the shed for our "game" area and we could add foosball! But, enough dreaming LOL.

Last night we went to the 4:00 church service, late. I thought, 'there are 3 services, so I'm sure this one won't be full' ~ WRONG! We got to the church at 4 and it was packed! After church, we loaded up the eggnog (Chris' homemade is now a tradition) and went Jeremy & Amber's house. They fed us all and then we opened the "people specific" presents. The boys each got a $50 bill from Grandma and when Taite opened his, Brayton said "It must be fake!" He didn't think that they made a $50 bill! We all laughed at that one!

On my side of the family we play the "Dice Game" instead of buying specific gifts for everyone and the boys start talking about playing this, oh, about a week after Christmas! They LOVE it. What it is is we have 5 presents (approx.) for each person that we bring and some are child specific so the boys have something to steal when the time comes. There are two dice and for the first round (until all the gifts are chosen ~ still wrapped) every time you get doubles, you can pick a gift. When they are all out of the center, then we open what we picked. This year Jeremy decided we all had to announce what we picked so when we started round 2, we'd know what we wanted to steal. The key to this round is it only goes on for 10 minutes for you to steal the presents you really wanted from everyone else. Great fun was had by all (except Steph & Brian because they were in Georgia ~ well, at least they didn't have great fun with us!) and with the exception of I "got into trouble" for 'guiding' the boys in what to steal when they got doubles and had already stolen all the "kid" gifts. I'll make amends today :~) Here are the videos of the boys opening their presents (or in the game table situation, the door).




Here I was opening my level. Chris got me the new Black & Decker level that lets you mark where the picture holes belong and then you can mark them on the wall after making sure it's level ~ very cool!!


The boys each got some Bakugon character things and that was one of the highlights. . . Of course they only cost $2.50.

Chris missed out on the wallet in the dice game, but that's okay because I had already bought him one for Christmas :-)

Chris had gotten me the dressier, shorter winter coat I wanted! Please do not look at my hair. . .


Chris was using my new level to level up the pool table. It was still a little off, but we had fun :~)