Epic Christmas post-- 2011

It had  lots of "ups" and a couple little  "downs", but overall we had  a wonderful Christmas 2011! Hope you all had the same :-)

As you can imagine Christmas is pretty much picture  perfect, so needless  to say I have a camera full of pictures to share! I'll  try to keep my commentary to a minimum lol....but be warned. I worked on this update off and on over a long period of time, so it's LONG. But detailed...true to Shawna blogging style ;-P

First  up, the 23rd. The big "down" is that I was (kinda sorta) sick! I didn't  actually  get sick like Raya and Brielle did and never had a fever or anything like  that, but all morning I just  felt blah and had no appetite at all. Luckily  Lee  was off work so he watched the girls in the morning while I slept, and by evening I was feeling pretty good as long as I didn't eat much. We figured since I didn't have any symptoms of being contagious with anything that I was safe to go to my dad's side Christmas party, so off  we went! It was a good time and the girls looked very cute in their holiday attire :-)

Kisses

Sawyer is at a fun age this  year. He gets *very* excited about presents lol.

At this Christmas we just bring along one present for each kid to open. It's fun though because it's  kind of their first present of a long string over the  next few days!

Brielle surprised me by  getting *very* excited about her singing/dancing sock monkey! It was pretty cute. He sings "Dynomite" by Taio Cruz lol. (and he actually  suffered an untimely death yesterday afternoon by Brielle's own hands we believe. Lee is trying to fix him. Poor sock monkey!)

Then on the 24th we celebrated Christmas with my immediate family--at my mom and dad's house. We all got spoiled!

For Raya the "hit" presents were the bear cub magnetic dress up dolls from my parents (these were very cool and came with two bear "dolls" and like 40 different little outfit/accessory pieces):

...and the makeup kit with real  makeup, from John and Emily

The girl sat and put  on lipstick  for 30 solid minutes LOL

For Brielle the "hit" present was her Pottery Barn Anywhere chair from my parents. She just loves to climb in and out of that thing!

Since I use this  blog as a baby book  for the girls I'm going to list  the other gifts (that I can remember! They  got so many!) ---so feel free to skip this part :-P

Raya got (from John, Emily, and kids): 4 pack of dress up shoes, cupcake purse, wand and crown, and makeup. From my parents she got: Pottery Barn chair, dress up cape with an "R" on it, musical princess wand toy, dress up magnetic bears, light up unicorn slippers, ornament, ....I'm sure  I'm forgetting stuff

Brielle got (from John and Emily): Sock monkey jack-in-the-box, new wub-a-nub paci (lion) and from my parents she got the Pottery Barn chair, bibs, ornament, Scentsy monkey, fridge gear toy (shared with Raya), .....?  The chairs were their big gifts and I love them!

Brielle falls out a lot but it doesn't  seem to bother her lol

I won't  bore you all with a list of what Lee and I got haha...but Lee's highlight was a fancy heater to install in our garage---soon it'll be as warm as our house! :-)  I'm already compiling a honey-do list of things he's going to build me out there this winter, now that it'll be toasty warm haha. And for me I got a couple very cool peices of wall art from John and Emily and from my parents the highlights included a new (giant) ironing board and rotary cutting mat for downstairs in my Etsy sweatshop--yay! Can't wait to try them out soon.

Here are more misc.  pictures from Christmas Eve at my parents'...

I made him a shirt with his name in camo---I swear the "S" is on there lol

One of Sawyer's  favorite  gifts from Grandma and Grandpa
(Raya's cape is  purple with an "R" on the back--she is kind of
scared of it right now haha)

Brielle wasn't  at all  interested in unwrapping

The Scentsy monkey

She  is not yet  too impressed with the lion paci haha. That poor monkey
is so worn though that hopefully she  learns to love the lion from John and Em!
Emily thought that by getting the lion she'd still  have  the tail she loves so much
about the monkey :-)

Raya's  chair  is more of a "love seat" :-)

The Caillou doll Santa brought ....more on that to come!

So then after my parents' we did all the Christmas Eve prep for Santa (I already blogged this earlier :-)  ....

and then Christmas morning Raya  saw that Santa had come! She was a little  hesitant coming downstairs for the first time haha...I think she honestly thought Santa would still be in our fireplace :-P

(I tried to do some collages for these next few to take up less space---click on the collages to enlarge them)

So Raya's haul (what I can remember) included: Caillou doll, Baby Bop shirt, 4 games, Melissa and Doug toys (snap and sort, patterning blocks, magnetic fishing and bug puzzles, clock puzzle, 10 ft. long ABC train puzzle),  I Can Pound hammering/fine motor activity, 3 new puppet books, personalized fairy book, Minnie shirt/socks/pen, icecream playdough maker, ...?

Brielle got: train, personalized puzzle, baby "blocks", and 2 sweaters.

And I did great for Lee this year---he loved the remote controlled helicopter I got him!

So all in all a great Christmas! The  big "down" of Christmas morning was that  Brielle was very grumpy/sick/not herself. Thankfull she only had a couple presents and we had already planned on it being mostly  about Raya, so it wasn't too big of a deal. I would have been so upset if she was my only child though because she was definitely *not* happy! Thankfully by the afternoon she was doing much better. Another little "down" was that Raya is at an age where she just wants to play with her gifts.....so each time she'd open one she wanted  to play with it right then and there, and she wasn't motivated to keep opening. Her attention span struggled a little, but with some play breaks inbetween she ended up happily opening them all and she really  seemed to like her presents--espeically the Baby Bop shirt which made my day! It's definitely  big on her, but not as outrageous as I feared. I have to fold the sleeves up about 3 inches, but she doesn't mind...and the length isn't horrible. To my surprise though she doesn't care about her Caillou doll at all! She was very excited when she opened him, and then she started asking where her Baby Bop shirt was (as though seeing the Caillou doll was her cue that Baby Bop was coming too!) ...but then after that she hasn't paid a whole lot of attention to poor Caillou. She did  ask me why he doesn't sing when she pushed his belly though LOL. Oh well, Santa can't win them all! So far her favorite gifts from Santa have been  the playdough icecream maker, the "take the cake" game I got at B&N (highly recommend....it's awesome for this age), and the "I Can Pound" kit by Fundanoodle---which actually I was disappointed with when I opened it because basically you pound these pegs into a foam board to make designs, and I assumed the foam was self healing in some way (that the holes would fill back in) but it's not---the foam is just regular foam and so after doing one design page it's already full of holes. I"m really confused because everything else about the kit is so nice and I don't understand if you just use  it until it's so full of holes that you buy new foam or what. I didn't see replacement parts anywhere online though. Oh well, Raya really likes it so we'll  just see how long it works for I guess!

Here are more random pictures  of Christmas day. We didn't have anywhere to go so it was a relaxing day at home (or as relaxing as it could be with a fussy baby and a toddler who wanted to get a new game out every 15 minutes and would chant "play with me mama!" haha.

fussy baby

Playing dress up bears....

...with Daddy!

More  lipstick  LOL

Does she have  enough on? hehe

Lee likes  the magnetic fridge gear toy! haha. He said it's a very cool "engineering toy" Grandma :-P

This is one of her 2 new  sweaters Santa made her :-P The blue goes great with her eyes, don't  you think?!

Sometime during all this she broke sock monkey :-(

Raya with her two long-awaited Santa gifts! :-)

"Why doesn't he sing when I push his  belly Mama?!"

I am seriously impressed with anyone who read that whole  thing !!! Good for you--you now relived our Christmas with us. Hope it was as good for you as it was for us! hehe. Can't wait to do it all again next year, but now it's time to start thinking about the next big "holiday"....Brielle's first birthday party!! :-)