Christmas Eve at Mom's

We got to spend a few days before Christmas at Mom's house and the Chris's came over too. Olivia had a great idea of bringing dress up clothes so that's what we did first. She decided to wear her Christmas dress, Emma has on the Sleeping Beauty pink dress, Chloe is the Snow White in the corner and in the middle of everything, as always, is Buzz Lightyear!

Mom is nice enough to let the kids use her spare room and she put a couple of blow up mattresses in there for them to 'sleep' on.

Buzz is getting a little help from the Christmas Queen with his glubs.

This costume is great, I got it at the Disney store after Halloween, it's got everything, suit, hood, boots (with built in knee pads), gloves and little lights that blink on the back wing. It's a little big but I'm afraid it's going to be too small for next Halloween.

I had a really hard time getting Snow White to turn around. While the rest of them are literally running around like banshees she's just sitting there quietly playing. Every once in a while she looks over at them like 'You guys are nuts' then goes back to playing.

Everyone decided to change back into their clothes so they could go outside but Buzz just felt too naked without his hood and gloves. We can always use a few more laughs so I said why not!

Ok, they went outside and after awhile I look out the window and I see them setting up lawn chairs at the fence. So I snapped a few shots then went outside to see what was going on.

You're going to love this one - 'We've made a nest and we're waiting for the birds to come and live in it!' Emma and Olivia had gathered a nice little bed of grass, leaves and twigs on a small paper plate and perched it in an old bush. The then pulled the chairs up to about a foot away so they could wait for the birds. They actually sat there for about 20 minutes then they moved it do different places in the yard.

After that it was time to come inside and decorate the Gingerbread house and cookies!!!

Everyone did a fantastic job. I took Heather's advice and I put the icing on and they all put on the candy. I think they did pretty good, Dave put a few on then decided that he would rather eat them. Olivia decided we should take the gingerbread snowmen they decorated and put them around the house as well.

Later that night we helped Mom decorate her Christmas tree which was lots of fun. She got one she can plant just like the old days.

Christmas Eve morning the kids woke up ready to go, Mom had put all the presents out under the tree the night before while they were asleep and they were of course dying to open them up.

We had decided to wait until the Chris's came back over to open things up. Olivia decided to make her post on the present Mom told her was hers underneath the tree.

Dave didn't stray too far either. His face says it all - how much longer do we have to wait?

They made it!! I didn't actually get many pictures of the kids opening presents, as soon as the first was opened I was busy trying to undo the yards of metal ties, tape, boxes, etc so that we could actually get the toys out of the packaging.

Chloe got her a baby doll from Mom and wasn't interested in much else after that. I enjoyed her lounging pose below.
We all had a great time at Mom's, thank you to everyone for the gifts, the kids have been having lots of fun with them all. I hated to leave but wanted to get back so they could see that Santa had been to their house Christmas morning.