Christmas 2011

Christmas was a little different this year with the move hanging over us.  At noon on Christmas Eve I put everything dealing with the move on hold and dedicated the next 18 hours purely to Christmas.  We went caroling at the Senior Center with the VanGeisons, the Adams and some of the Hamblins.  After that we went to dinner at the VanGeisons and enjoyed some good food and good friends.  We had to forego our normal light sight-seeing trip and after dinner we went home to open our Christmas Eve present. 

The kids have always gotten PJ's to open on Christmas Eve but the older boys kept going on and on about how boring the jammies are and how they might not even open theirs on Christmas Eve.  No on needed new jammies and so I decided to switch things up on them and got them all Pillow Pets instead.

Lucas got Thomas the Tank Engine.

Cinderella Pillow Pet

Lucas helped me pick these out for the boys and he decided that they both needed at Yoda.  I was going to get something else for Guss but Lucas insisted that Guss needed one too.

The scene as the kids come down the stairs.

Chloe got to be the first one down, even though the boys woke up first.

The boys had time to shower and get dressed for church before we let them wake up the little kids.

The rest of the troops down to check out their loot.

Santa brought new chairs for Chloe and Lucas.

Lego organizers for Guss and Owen.

We waited until after church to open all the presents that were under the tree.

Chloe made herself and Cinderella very comfortable for the present opening.

Lucas was very excited about Cars 2.

Owen couldn't get enough of the fun.  He was the last man standing.

That night we packed up all our new toys and headed out to our temporary house at the beach in Wells.  It was fun to spend one last Christmas in our house in Sanford.  It was a peaceful day before the craziness of the move fully hit.  We got the house totally emptied out and cleaned over the next two days only to have the sale fall through the night before close.  It was a very stressful couple of months after that but in the end the same people were able to work out their problems and buy the house at the end of February.