Christmas Eve and Morning

Santa showed up!  He brought a pyramid for Peanut and a leapster for BabyP.  He also brought lots of chocolate.  If you ask BabyP what he got for Christmas, his answer is chocolate.

Santa is also just a little naughty.  This year he drew on the fireplace with icing and left his beer bottle knocked over with the reindeer oats and things all spread about.  He is so naughty.  Peanut made sure that each of the reindeer got a carrot.

BabyP's stuff

Peanut's stuff

Captain Underpants

Anything Egyptian

Mommy's present from daddy.

tractor tire eyes

She had already made a head band before the trash was even cleared away.

Trampoline!!!

We got the kids a trampoline, and someone bought me a fish eye for my camera.  The fish eye is SO MUCH FUN.  And the trampoline seems fun too.  All three kids (Mr. T.  included!) seem to love it.

Her smile makes me insanely happy!

on her way up!

This is the "I am concentrating face."  He always opens his mouth for it.

I swear no one has a better time than her!

Try not to kiss me!

BabyP's Party

These are a few of the pictures that I took of BabyP's Christmas party.  Does it not look like they are having a party?  The reason is because I MISSED IT AGAIN. Seriously?!  I make jokes about him being the second child and me not loving him that much, but I can see that some people may believe that since I can't make it to his party.

But we got lots of pictures of Ms. Jannis.  WE LOVE HER. I want to take her home with me so we can do crafts together.  See these Santas?  The kids made them.  They make some crazy cool art.  BabyP likes to color now and he LOVES to write letters.  It is so cute.

Look other kids in the class...

And Santa!  Isn't he cute?

Cookies!

On Christmas Eve, we got around to making our Christmas cookies.  I usually bake a lot before Christmas, but this year I was a little obsessed with getting a ton of other stuff done so not much got done at all.  In fact, we didn't do salt dough ornaments this year.  

The little flecks are oatmeal.  I use an oatmeal cookie recipe that is formulated for cutting.  I love it and the cookies always taste so yummy.  I like them much more than sugar cookies.

this is a somewhat cleaned up mess left after two kids do a bit of icing. I totally cheated and got canned icing and frosting because I was lazy and bit gun shy after the weird icing incident with the not so buttercream icing.

They were super tasty, even though they look the the collection spot for the worlds longest poo.  That is how three year olds decorate.  Then they giggle madly when you say poo.

Ginger Bread Houses

Every year we make ginger bread houses.  Previously, I thought the houses didn't work well because of the icing we used.  This year, we used melted chocolate, which worked wonders.  

BUT, the houses still didn't work well.  So next year, we will buy them at the grocery store and put them together.  I will buy additional candy that is fun, but I am not rolling those stupid things out again.  It is so frustrating for the cookies to expand in the oven and not work well.

Peanut (literally LOL) eats this kind of thing up!  She loves it.  It is two of her favorite things, cooking and art. She also agrees that making them homemade is a hassle, and that we are just going to buy them from the grocery store next year.

It was nice to see him get into it this year.

See his house?  That has some of the NOT buttercream frosting that turned out NOT well.

I think that I somehow managed to not get pictures of the finished product. OH WELL.  next year...