Merry Christmas!

We had a wonderful Christmas, and we hope that you all did too. We kept it low key this year, and didn't take too many pictures, but we will share what we have.

This was after Clark's Christmas program at his pre-K. Clark did a very good job performing. You can see some of his reenactment at home with this link. In the picture above, we were trying to get a nice picture of all the kids, but they had different plans, of course. Why were we so eager for her to start walking?

We decided to step up our game with Christmas lights this year since there was a good sale at Lowe's on the mini lights. It was fun having all the lights up, but I don't know if it was worth all the work. I still need to take them down, too. 

This isn't a great picture, but we got to go see a free nutcracker performance (not the full ballet) at the snobby mall in Dallas. The crowds were crazy! Fortunately we got there early enough to snag a decent spot (yes we were viewing them from behind, which got really awkward with some of those ballerinos). The kids seemed to enjoy it quite a bit. 

We decided to have tamales on Christmas Eve. Tamales are a traditional Christmas food (I don't know why) and I love them. These were store bought, unfortunately. They were still good, but a homemade tamal is a truly wonderful thing. 

We opened gifts on Christmas Eve this year, and did stockings in the morning. Plus, Clark found a hot wheels track set and Sabrina found a new bike waiting for them Christmas morning. Sabrina thought the bike was too big for her until one of her friends came over and rode it around. I think seeing her younger friend ride her bike was more than Sabrina could stand, so she kept practicing until she got the hang of using the hand brakes and getting on and off the taller seat. Still working on shifting gears. 

Yummy Christmas morning fruit salad! Prepared in advance, of course. We had church at 9, so we needed to be a little quick in order to get there on time and fit in yummy breakfast and play time. I tell you one beautiful thing about opening gifts on Christmas eve is that the kids didn't wake us up really early. They got up around the normal time and played with their toys for a while. Then we got up and we all went and looked at stockings together. 

All the kids got a teddy bear for Christmas. Eliza loves cuddling with hers. She is really learning to show off for attention now-a-days. 

I got an origami beginner's guide for Christmas and I spent several days creating little origami things that have started piling up around the house. I think the duck and flamingo are my favorites. The elephant didn't turn out to great, but he was my first more difficult one that I tried. The purple seal looks alright, too. It is pretty fun to do origami; you should try it.