Merry Christmas!

It's 8:20pm on Christmas Day. Drew & Mara are in bed, Kai is playing "Race to the Mall with Polly Pocket" in the living room, Bob is sleeping & Norman Roufus is out in the yard with Grant, hopefully learning how not to pee in our house.

The last couple of days have been busy, but glorious. On the 23rd we hosted the first of what will hopefully be an annual Christmas party. We had 40 people here - almost half of them kids! It was a very loud, but successful, first attempt. We copied Nana's ornament exchange and it ended up being a really cool part of the night.

Savannah, Jaya, Mara & Kai
(Kai just had to change into jammies halfway through the night)

Em, Drew & Savannah "help" Curtis open his ornament

Bright & early the morning after the party Drew & Grant went to pick up Norman. We then spent most of a warm and sunny Christmas Eve outside playing with a very enthusiastic snow digger. We must have really tired him out because his first night away from his mum & brothers went off without a hitch...until Drew woke him up at 3:30am. (more about that below)

Last night DK both left their wish lists out for Santa. Both of them were quite worried he may not have known what they wanted because they didn't see him at the mall this year. Thank god he got their letters at the last minute or else the morning would have been a disaster! It was fantastic to witness their excitement and unwavering belief that Santa was on his way. We tracked him online and when he was getting close they went straight to bed, but struggled to get to sleep. Drew came out of his room a couple of times because he was positive he heard the bells.

As mentioned above, Drew came into our room at 3:30 to announce,

"HECAME!HEREALLYCAME!!!
HELEFTDADANDMEHOCKEYSTICKSANDHEATEHISCOOKIEANDDRANKTHEMILK!!"

Grant & I were exhausted but excited. Somehow we managed to convince him that he had to wait a few hours to open anything, but by that time Norman had gotten into the spirit and was ready to play. Grant then spent the rest of the night up with him. I, quite honestly, felt not one ounce of sorry for him.

And so it began...

...and continued

Pure concentration

Kai gets her pink Nintendo...

...and her pink guitar

At Bumpa's this afternoon, they found 100 more ways to be spoiled

Mara has a very bad cold, but she still managed to
drool & smile her way through her first Christmas

Tonight (now that the house is quiet) we can see that we are truly lucky & very blessed. We hope everyone's Christmas was as wonderful as ours!