Christmas Eve

The kids spent the first part of Christmas break with Keith, after he flew out to SF I went down to spend Christmas Eve with them and the Pope family. We had a great time, but I'm not sure I know what presents they got, as it was such a madhouse once the presents were handed out! There are now 7 kiddos, but baby Abby didn't get into the craziness, all handing out presents and opening them as fast as they could! It's funny, it was all boys for 10 years until Emma was born (she is 5 months older than Kit). The girls had a few stare downs at first, but once they found the bows on the presents to play with they got along just fine-even shared stickers!

and my little old man

If he wakes up on his own, Riley likes to come get in my bed in the mornings. I was brushing my teeth and leaned over to tell him to go get dressed when I caught him "reading" the newspaper ads! I had to take his picture, and hold back a laugh. Of course he didn't see the humor in the situation, he was busy picking out a new camera for himself, ha!

Fashion Diva

I have learned to warn people when Riley has dressed himself, and that I take no responsibility for his outfits. Apparently it is time to add Kit to the warning list! She is wearing her church dress that she refused to change for her nap, jeans to keep warm(I did insist on pants!) red socks-she always wants the red socks, sparkly shoes from Oma, Riley's Georgia Tech hat, and her play sweatshirt! Sadly, even though I didn't actually dress her, she most definitely has my fashion sense or lack thereof, how sad...
While Riley looks quite cute and he dressed himself too!

Getting the Christmas season started...

We (ok, I) found a Christmas tree farm not too far away, so we went and picked the perfect tree. Ok, seriously, how long should it take a 2 and 4 year old to pick out a tree?? It took them FOREVER!! The trees were too tall, too short, too fat, the wrong color(??)...so I pretty much had to convince them that this tree was perfect. Then the delightful process of sawing the bottom of the tree of-which they were nice enough to do for me. I am proud to say I carried the tree in and set it up all by MYSELF! So what if it's a little lopsided in the stand, they can't tell!




Then last week we braved the mall, on a Friday night no less, to visit Santa. We took Kit by a few times in the past few weeks to wave and say hi to Santa so she wouldn't flip out this year. She was all excited about seeing him, even waved to him while we were in line, then proceeded to flip out when I tried to put her on his lap! He bribed her with a puppy dog she could hold, but her pouty face is priceless. Riley was also nice enough to tell Santa that she wanted a my little pony, of course after he asked for geotrax and a dinosaur!

More matching jammies!

My mom has told me I have an unhealthy obsession with making my children match, but it's just so cute. Plus I only have a few more years (maybe) that they'll let me get away with it! So, here are their matching winter penguin jammies, yes winter-because they have Christmas ones too. Ignore their socks-they take complete responsibility for picking them out!

when it gets quiet....

Every mom knows that when the kids get quiet they are probably doing something incredibly naughty, right? So imagine my surprise to find Riley quietly playing with the ipod, though I wasn't sure why until he showed me the games on there. Did anyone else know there are games on ipods, because I sure didn't! Leave it to the 4 year old to figure it out!
Oh, and notice his ever faithful companion Lulu-he is so rough with her, but she still follows him around. (Please ignore the mess in the background!)