Hayley's Christmas

Last but not least is our little Hayley. Hayley was so cute and fun this Christmas. She couldn't wait for Santa to come and it's just so fun (and easy) to shop for a little girl.

Hayley's ornament this year was an angel because she is our "littlest angel" (and getting too big too fast!).

Hayley was thrilled to find her own little kitty WebKinz in her stocking, and also her own little Elmo umbrella (she loves to play with Hannah & Courtney's umbrellas). She told me she was going to name her WebKinz "Kitty" (I told you our kids come up with original names).

It was so fun to watch Hayley open her presents. She would rip the paper very carefully starting at the corners and then almost immediately squeal with excitement the minute she caught sight of any of the present underneath -- even before she had any real idea of what it was. And then no matter what it was, she was just as happy and excited as could be. Here she is opening her Angelina Ballerina present (one of her favorite new book/movie characters). The present had a stuffed Angelina doll, a stuffed Henry doll (the little mouse cousin), an Angelina book, a little Angelina purse and an Angelina dress-up sticker book (like paper dolls).

Hayley's other presents included lots of little girl things: a couple of Barbie-related toys, Littlest Pet Shop figures, some books, the game "Cootie," a little Snap-n-Style baby doll, her own lion flashlight (so she wouldn't have to keep taking Courtney's tiger flashlight), a Chou Chou interactive baby doll and a cute kitty outfit.

Even before we had all finished opening presents, Hayley started taking her presents over to the stairs and just lining them up on the steps. I have no idea why she did this -- maybe she just wanted to check it all out!

Here she is with her new Chou Chou baby doll. I must say that Santa wasn't sure if she would really like a baby doll since she doesn't play with the ones we have an awful lot. But this doll (which laughs, cries, goes to sleep, drinks a bottle, etc.) was a great deal and so far, she loves it. She takes it to bed with her and carries it around the house. Her favorite is feeding the doll her bottle. The bottle has some white liquid encased inside that seems to "disapper" when you tip it up. When Hayley was feeding her doll, she came to me and asked me for some milk in a specific sippy cup, because, as she told me, "I can't have my baby's milk because it can make me sour."

Here is Hayley playing with her Barbie laptop (it has a small LCD screen and some basic preschool letter/number games):

As I mentioned in Courtney's post, all of the girls are at ages where they enjoy playing with similar toys (if you haven't noticed, Littlest Pet Shop and My Little Pony are very popular around here!). Hayley has a tendency to quickly "claim" the other girl's toys as her own and carry them all around the house, etc. (She also does this with any candy or treats she finds!) Here she is playing with Courtney's My Little Pony set.

We've had a few clashes with Hayley's "everything-is-mine" tendency, but for the most part, I think the girls do really well at sharing their toys and playing together. I'm certainly grateful for that!

Courtney's Christmas

Courtney's turn is next...she had the biggest Christmas wish list of them all. It seemed like every time she saw a TV commercial or came to the store with me, she wanted some thing added to her list. But then she never seemed to remember most of the things she requested for her list, anyway. (I predict she will be an impulse shopper!)

Courtney's special ornament was three little bells tied together. No real special "meaning" behind her choice, although I guess you could say there are 3 bells and she's the 3rd child.

Courtney's WebKinz pet in her stocking was a tree frog. She said that Santa must know about her "frog hop." I agreed! Courtney has perfected the frog hop form of locomotion and zips around everywhere we go. She named her frog "Hoppy."

Courtney's presents this year included some My Little Pony and Littlest Pet Shop (like her sisters), a Leapster game, a little interactive "pet doctor" puppy, her first nightshirt, some books, a big art kit and a stamp set.

Courtney is our budding artist and also got a fun hypotrochoid set (aka "Spirograph"!)

...and a cool Lego mosaic kit where you set a clear flat Lego board over a pattern and then add the pieces needed to make a picture.

Courtney and Hannah (and Hayley) enjoy many of the same things, and for the most part they are good about sharing their toys with each other. Here are Courtney and Hannah playing with their new My Little Pony "Ponyville" sets (they are much smaller ponies and pieces than the regular My Little Ponies).

I must say that we have an awful lot of little toy pieces all over our house!

Hannah's Christmas

Hannah had a much better Christmas Day than Christmas Eve. It was literally like a night and day difference with her. (I'm still not sure what all the factors were -- maybe she was just really tired or something last night.)

The special ornament I had picked out for Hannah was a metal musical note (eighth notes) where the two notes at the bottom were jingle bells. I picked it because of her affinity to music -- she is doing so well with piano lessons and she loves to sing/hum (plus, she is my best singer as far as singing on key). But when I gave it to her, I didn't get quite the reaction I anticipated. She burst into tears and told me how much she didn't like it. (You can barely see the ornament in her hand -- she refused to hold it up.)

She actually gave it back to me at one point, but when she realized I didn't have any others to give her instead, she took it back. She told me through her tears several times that next year I'd better make sure her ornament isn't about music. (She can be quite dramatic at times, if you hadn't noticed.)

I still don't know why this upset her so badly, but it was enough to really put her in a grumpy mood the whole rest of the evening (can you see how much she is frowning here?):

I talked to her later about why I chose it (because of piano and singing) and she seemed to feel a little better about it -- I think she wasn't thinking about the singing aspect of it at first. Later today I was finally brave enough to ask if she liked it anymore and she said she did a little. So maybe there's hope she won't have terrible memories every time she looks at it in the future.

After stockings last night, Hannah wanted to go outside and sprinkle her "reindeer food" she had brought home from her school party (basically crushed up pretzels, graham crackers, M&M's, etc.). So we went out briefly to do that (she was still grumpy, but not quite so much).

This morning, though, I think Hannah was the most excited of the bunch -- at least the most visibly excited. (She woke up about 3:30am because her eye hurt and maybe fell back asleep around 5:30 or 6:00 for a short time.) She was the one jumping up and down and screaming/shrieking about presents. Check her out jumping in this shot:

Hannah's little WebKinz in her stocking was a white terrier. (See McKay's post for a description of WebKinz.) She named her pet "Fluffy" (our kids come up with the most exciting pet names, don't they?)

Hannah got a wide variety of presents. They included Littlest Pet Shop and My Little Pony things, some books, some games (regular and computer), a couple of wooden bead sets (for making necklaces, bracelets, etc.), a stamp set, and a new nightshirt.

Hannah also got her own karaoke machine with a couple of kid's karaoke CDs to go with it. She really is a pretty good singer.

(McKay has also enjoyed "singing" into the microphone of the karaoke machine -- with the volume turned WAY up -- but his singing is not quite as in tune as Hannah's.)

The girls got a box of dress-up clothes (bigger sizes) -- Hannah tired several of them on this afternoon:

And here's a shot of her and Courtney at bedtime in their new nightshirts. Hannah has worn a nightshirt for the past year probably. She also has a pair of pajamas but she definitely prefers her nightshirt -- I think partly because it is so quick and easy to put on. Courtney has wanted one too, so she was excited to get one this year.

McKay's Christmas

McKay was excited for Christmas this year, as well as his sisters. (He was one of the ones who snuck downstairs early this morning!) He loves to help sort the presents (he was even sorting and counting presents several days before Christmas).

McKay's special ornament to start off our new Christmas tradition was a white sparkly snowflake, chosen because he always talks about the snow in Utah and Wyoming and takes after his dad in not always wanting to wear a jacket in cold weather.

McKay also loves to put up -- and especially to rearrange -- Christmas lights. He put up the lights on the bushes in our front yard this year and it seemed like every day he had gone out to move them around. (We finally had to bring some of them inside.) He even talks about wanting to use his own money to go buy more Christmas lights. :-)

At 9 years old, McKay is beginning to have his doubts about Santa Claus. This year he decided to leave a note for Santa next to the cookies:

Santa signed the note (in his own special red pen) as: "Kris Kringle or Santa".

McKay is also getting to be a hard boy to shop for. His last-minute requests for Santa were a joystick (for computer games) and some sort of hovercraft (that he saw a TV commercial for). However, instead of those things, he got lots of other good stuff.

McKay's presents included an interactive globe (which we have to take back and exchange because the battery compartment is corroded), an ant farm that uses a gel substance (still have to send away for the ants), several computer games and a Nintendo 64 game, a Snap Circuits electronic kit, a few board and card games, a set of small paper punches in different shapes (so he doesn't always borrow Mom's from her scrapbook stuff), a little kinetic energy "toy" consisting of a top you spin on a base that is supposed to keep spinning for hours/days at a time and several books.

McKay is a big non-fiction reader -- I have a hard time finding fiction books that he will read for his daily reading assignments. I saw some used books recently that I thought he would enjoy -- one group is a set on the childhoods of different famous Americans and the other group are history books for kids that focus on one event or landmark. He was excited about these and I think already read two of the history ones before bedtime.

(Here's another picture from a couple of days ago of McKay reading a non-fiction book about inventions with Hannah -- I liked how it turned out!)

McKay told me on Christmas Eve that he wondered if Santa would put a stuffed animal in his stocking (as Santa frequently does). He also told me he hoped Santa wouldn't do that this year because he really doesn't like stuffed animals anymore. Well, it turns out that Santa DID leave a stuffed animal in everyone's stocking again. These stuffed animals were WebKinz -- the first our kids have ever had. (WebKinz are stuffed animals that come with a code you can register on the WebKinz Web site to adopt and "interact" with your pet -- built it's room, play with it, feed it, play games to earn "money" to go "shopping" for stuff, etc.) McKay's WebKinz was a little pug dog:

As you can tell, McKay decided this little guy wasn't so bad after all. He has already adopted him online (he named him Pugster). I think he would have been quite disappointed if Santa hadn't left him one.

Merry Christmas!

Greetings to all this Christmas evening! We have had an exciting day here -- I love the contagious excitement of children at Christmastime. Since I have a TON of pictures I want to share, I thought I would post a little here about our overall traditions and then do a separate post about each of the kids this year. (That way there isn't one huge long post and I can tell you more about each kid!)

Our Christmas Eve traditions involve usually watching/reading something on the birth of Christ (this year we watched the church's "Joy to the World" DVD). Then we get out the stockings to hang up over the fireplace.

That's always followed by a picture of the kids in front of the stockings:

This year I decided to start a new tradition I had read about. Each year, we will give each kid a special ornament and somehow mark it with the year and perhaps their name or initials. They hang it on the tree and then maybe even store all of "their" ornaments in a special box. When they leave home, they will have their own box of ornaments to take with them! Since I didn't get the ornaments this year until after we had decorated the tree, I decided to wait until Christmas Eve to give them to the kids.

(You can read more about Hannah's reaction in her individual post.)

After the stockings, the kids get out our "Cookies for Santa" plate and choose a couple of sugar cookies to leave. They also sometimes like to leave notes for Santa next to the cookies (see McKay's post for info about his note). Then it's off to bed!

Here's our tree (taken with no flash) on Christmas Eve...

In the morning, we tell the kids they can't go downstairs until we're all ready (although a couple of them snuck downstairs briefly this morning, I was told). As you might expect, they are just as anxious as can be to come down! I think we held them off this morning until about 7:00am or so.

They run down to see what Santa left in their stockings...

...and under the tree...

After they get down their stockings and check out what's there, they choose their spot on the floor and sort out the presents.

We take turns opening presents (because I love to watch them open each one) and are left with a huge mess by the end of the day!

One of the "big" presents for all the kids this year was a Nintendo 64 system. You might not think an old used Nintendo 64 is anything to get excited about, but our kids were thrilled because we have never had a video game system before. They've only been able to play video games when we visit relatives (and oh -- they've felt so deprived!). I saw a good deal on a used one a few months that had several games, so we gave in and bought it. It turned out to be definitely used and not in the best condition, but we were able to get it to work. (And Brian's been working on cleaning the games a little more tonight and that seems to be helping a bunch.)

McKay & Hannah are the most excited about the Nintendo. Courtney likes to play some, too, but she gets easily frustrated with the games and not being able to "win" all the time. Hayley is not interested at this point. She's got more exciting things to play with. :-)

Christmas Day also means no cooking for me -- it's leftovers all the way! We have a big dinner on Christmas Eve (ham, homemade rolls, potato casserole, cranberry punch, etc.) so there are plenty of leftovers to munch on the next day.

Now I have to get busy finding places to put all this "stuff"!