mirth & mint: luda-christmas!

Another Christmas has come and gone! This one was particularly special for us because 1) we had the babies for the actual day this year! 2) it was our first Christmas in our new house! 3) we didn't have to go anywhere! Darrah, Cody, Ryan, and Juju all came to US! 4) I could take off the entire week of thanks to that "realtor" schedule! ;D

Here are a few pictures of Christmas Eve and Christmas Day after the jump, if you'd like to see... (I take what could be considered an "obnoxious" amount of pictures during the Great Present Opening)

The night before included alot of cooking with Meg and Richard, present-stashing, and "Sadie, get back to sleep!" (Girlfriend could not unwind!) All after an evening at Mema's! Like our stocking placement? That's what you get when there is no fireplace and Kylie refuses to take any art down from the walls. ;)

The littles left Santa a bounty of rum-cake for his efforts (and some of the cutest post-it notes I've ever seen).

By the time everything was ready to go, it was... 2:30am. And then I had the great idea of R and myself taking a "Christmas Eve" photo before going to bed, which was torturous and hilarious. This was the best one (remember: it was 2:30am).

Finally, the morning of! Miraculously, no one came in to wake us up this year, but they were of course ready to go the moment we stepped out of our room (and were hamming it up for the camera until we let them start). ;) I used to feel weird taking as many pictures as I do on Christmas morning, but I really do capture so many adorable surprised faces that I would honestly miss or overlook otherwise due to the chaos. I'm totally ok being "that parent." ;)

Obligatory Monster High dolls. ;D

New shoes (for R3) and Hot Topic shirts (For Meg... look at their surprised faces... can you tell their siblings or what?!)

And of course, "Frozen" everything!

Emily is really into beanies right now, so Meg and I picked out the perfect one for her!

Something with a remote, of course. :)

The hair dye she's been wanting...

R and I even got presents from R3 and Sadie, too! (Remember these?) A screwdriver set and a peppermint candle... they know us so well!

A lava lamp (which Emily said "I've been wanting this for two whole years!") and a scooter from Juju. :)

A catapult from Tonya & Stephen (so perfect!) and a floor mat from Juju (so her feet have some cushion when she dyes hair; believe it or not, she has repeatedly asked for one and it was the perfect Juju gift!)

A penny board...

Ballet clothes!

The best shirts for our little man.

And make-up for our growing girl. :)

Some kind of Nerf gun (don't ask me!), and look at that face!

Sadie and Emily with Tonya's hand-made boot cuffs (mine are yellow and Meghan's are rainbow). ;P

"Big burly beard balm" from Tonya and Stephen (and the greatest picture of the day, me thinks!!!)

An Easy-Bake Oven for Sadie-bug!

Annnd Skylanders!! for Emmy and R3 :)

Then came time for the final "bigs." :) Sadie got a Nintendo 3DS (that faaace!)

Emmy got an iPod 5 (meaning we can FaceTime and text her now! BFD!)

Meghan and her bow. :D

And R3 got a motor-scooter! He's been asking for aaages. :) We took out the scooter to charge it days before (and Richard had to test-drive it, duh) so we just had a huge box for him to unwrap. He figured out what it was one one rip and turned into the sweetest Hugging Dumpling. ;)

And he immediately went outside to play with it!

And he even let his little sister come along for a ride... :D

While Emmy got right down to business with that iPod.

Da with his very stylish new headphones (from moi) :D

The girls gradually changed into their new digs and could be found like this for the rest of the day...

... until Darrah and the boys got here, at least!

They gifted us a wonderful little family game that got everyone moving outside. It was so thoughtful! Outdoor family gifts always!

We had a wonderful Christmas dinner, with Yankee turkey, Chilean sea bass for me, stuffing, sweet potato casserole, broccoli/rice casserole, creamed onions, and rolls. NOM NOM NOM.

After dinner, I was feeling particularly ambitious and decided to get super Christmas-y pictures while everyone was full from dinner and anxious to get back to their presents. And to feed my insanity, I really did get great pictures!