Since January is half over, I thought it was about time I posted pictures of Christmas. And I have to warn you that there are a ton. So this is mostly for Grandmas and Grandpas and aunts and uncles to look at. But here's how our Christmas went down.
I stayed in bed until 6am just like Mom and Dad told me to. But you better believe I was calling for them at 6:01. Unfortunately, Sydney is not an early riser and will usually sleep until at least 7:30, so Mom and Dad woke her up so I wouldn't have too wait forever to check out my loot.
Waiting at the top of the stairs (see how tired Syd looks. But don't worry, she perked right up once she saw the goodies Santa left for her. And I know I don't look totally awake, but the flash on the camera was really bright so early in the morning).
What we found downstairs:
Santa's plate of cookies--he always makes sure to leave one for me. He also left a bell from his sleigh like I asked for.
Sydney was soooooooo excited about her new kitchen from Santa.
And I know I don't look thrilled in this pic, but I really was--I got the Ironman I asked for.
When we took pics of all our stocking stuff, I made sure Syd and I had a pic with Cooper's stocking too.
Dad was kind of lazy and tried handing out presents while sitting on the couch. Syd and I gave him a hand.
I wonder what this could be?
I think Mom and Dad regretted giving me nunchucks after we played with them and realized that they weren't a soft as they thought.
Syd loves babies and couldn't wait to get this baby out of her box and stick the binky in her mouth.
Dad got a sleeping bag and spent the rest of the time opening presents in it.
Angry bird slippers:
Wooden cookies:
Ninja turtle battle bus:
New baseball cap and coat:
Syd wanted to wear the hat all morning:
What could these be? And who could have wrapped them?
I made mom a candy cane ornament at school which she loved.
Grandma and Grandpa de Jong were here and opened a few presents too, but not nearly as many as me and Syd.
Dad got a new exercise bike (although I think Mom bought it partly for herself).
The aftermath:
All of our goodies:
I am so sad that Christmas is over. Sometimes I wish we could have Christmas every day, but then Mom always tells me it wouldn't be special that way. I can't wait for Christmas next year!
I loved that Thanksgiving was so early this year, because that meant we had an extra week added to the Christmas season! Besides all the fun stuff we did for Cooper, here are some other things we did.
Mom and Dad celebrated their ninth anniversary on 12/12/12 and decided to do something special. They spent the night without us at Salish Lodge. I wish I could post some pics of that, but Blogger is being lame again and won't give me the option of uploading pics! Grrrr!!!
Anyway, my Aunt Kari flew up from AZ to watch me and Syd. It was soooo fun. One thing we did while she was here was make Gingerbread houses.
I made sure to make a blueprint for my house before I got started so I would know exactly what to do.
Aunt Kari showed us how to squeeze frosting from a plastic baggie to decorate the house.
I figured out how to squeeze it into my mouth all by myself.
The next morning Twinkly was waiting in the kitchen for us with elf sized pancakes! How cool is that! Elf pancakes are sooooo yummy!
Mom and I made donut snowmen as treats for my Kindergarten class even though we didn't have a class party. (Bah, humbug.)
There were tons of boxes arriving in the mail with presents in them, so I decided to make one of the boxes into a space ship. I put a picture of my family inside and drew the controls in the cockpit. Mom helped me design the wings and cut out the windows. It was a pretty tight fit.
And the next morning, we found that Twinkly had taken my ship for a joy ride!
Grandma and Grandpa de Jong flew up from CA to be here for Christmas and my cousins came over on Christmas Eve. We had so much fun playing minute-to-win-it games. In the first game, we had to put vaseline on our nose and hold a string in our mouth with a red pom pom on the end. Then we had to get the pom pom to stick to our nose (like Rudolph) without using our hands! It was tough (and really funny to watch) but I did it!
I didn't get a pic of Grandpa with the ball on his nose, but he got in there in about 5 seconds!
Another game was the nutstacker where we had to stack nuts on top of each other with a candy cane. Dad had six stacked, but they all fell right before the minute was up.
Grandpa and James had to blow on Christmas cards until they hung off a table by one side.
Some of us had to get an ornament from one side of the room into a square on the other side.
Grandma and Ted had to put a gingerbread man on their forehead and get it into their mouth without using their hands. That was hilarious!
And then there was the grand finale: Jingle in the Trunk. Uncle Ted sure can shake it!
After a few other games, the kids all exchanged presents.
After everyone went home, Syd and I opened our Christmas Eve pajamas.
And then it was time to say good-bye to Twinkly. Christmas Eve is the only night we are allowed to touch him since he's leaving until next year. We both gave him a hug and a kiss.
I sure miss that little guy. Can't wait to see him next year!
And believe it or not, I was so exhausted from all the fun we had that day, that I fell right asleep and STAYED asleep until 6am. Mom and Dad said I had to wait until that time to come out of my room. And since I love following rules, did just that. And it was totally worth it because Christmas morning was awesome! I'll fill you in next time.
I LOVE Christmas!!! And I have tons of stuff to tell you about what we did in December, but I wanted to tell you about one of my most favorite things we did.
Our family has never had a set of matching stockings, and the stockings we have don't have our names on them. But this year, Mom really wanted to get labeled matching stockings, so we did.
Cute, huh?
But once we had matching stockings, the next question was what to do with Cooper's stocking. Santa always fills our stockings under the Christmas tree. Mom didn't want Cooper's stocking hanging all by itself on the mantle and she didn't want it sitting under the tree with nothing in it. And she really didn't want to just pack it away on Christmas Eve. So instead, we did Christmas for Cooper. She didn't come up with the idea until the middle of December, so it ended up being twelve days of Christmas for Cooper. Each day a paper with an activity written on it was waiting inside Cooper's stocking for us to pull out. We did something new each day and Mom took a picture of it. Here are some of the fun things we did.
Watch "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" while eating white chocolate popcorn.
Make an ornament out of Legos.
Paint a snowman with marshmallows.
Make and decorate sugar cookies.
Watch "Home Alone" with a fire. (And McDonald's for dinner as a bonus!)
Make a Nativity scene out of popsicle sticks.
Visit Santa. (Sydney was too scared to sit with him.)
Take hot chocolate and money to the Salvation Army bell ringer.
Take homemande caramels to the firemen. (Bonus: We got to see the fire engines and sit on one!)
Paint Christmas sun catchers.
Take muffins to Dad's office. (If you look closely you can see the space in my mouth where I lost my first tooth! I told you December was busy!)
Visit Cooper.
So on Christmas morning this is what we found. Cooper's stocking was right there with all of ours and inside were pictures of everything we did for him for Christmas. So when we looked at everything in our stockings, we got to look through his and remember all the fun we had. I love my brother. I can't wait to do Christmas for him next year.
***Side note from my Mom: Ty loved this so much that he actually looked through Cooper's stocking and all of the pictures before he even dumped out his own stocking. It was one of the sweetest and most memorable moments of Christmas morning for me.
