Zauggie Bloggie: Holidays 2010

The holidays are over already?!? I can't believe it is January 2nd! The holidays were kind of a whirlwind for me, but here were some of my favorite moments:

Getting Christmas cards! This was my favorite card this year, (thanks Arden!!!)

Watching the kids sit on Santa's lap. I never know exactly what is going to happen when my kids are faced with sitting on the big guy's lap. I was pretty sure Arden would be fine, she was totally into the Santa stuff this year. I can't even count how many times I pulled out the "if you don't do/stop doing [insert action here], I am going to call Santa!" card during the weeks leading up to Christmas. Here is Arden, telling Santa about the scooter she wants for Christmas:

Dax did really well this year! This is the first year that he hasn't screamed when we sat him down with Santa, but you can tell from his face that he still isn't too sure about this guy with the beard:

Corbie wanted NOTHING to do with Santa's lap. Luckily for her, one of her very favorite people, my sister Val, was there to save the day and sit on Santa's lap for her so she could still get her present (what would we do without Val???):

Hearing Cora refer to my brother Dan as the "pizza guy." My brother and his family came to stay with us. They arrived on Christmas Eve. Cora woke up from her nap and discovered Dan and his family in our house eating pizza. She kept watching him and then pointing at him and saying "Pizza guy??" She was pretty confused as to why the pizza guy and his family were in our house. She called him "pizza guy" all week, despite our attempts to straighten her out. She said things like "Pizza guy, where aahh you?" and "Night-night pizza guy!" Hilarious. By the end of the week, she was calling him "Pizza guy Dan," so at least there was some improvement.
Watching Arden be so excited for Santa. She helped me make cookies for him and eagerly checked to make sure he had eaten them on Christmas morning (as with last year, Santa left half a cookie, which Dax finished up for him). Here is Arden with her spoils from Santa, includig the much-wished-for scooter:

Watching the present-opening chaos that was Christmas morning:

Seeing Dax try to carry around his haul of dinosaurs. Dax has been completely obsessed with Dinosaurs for a couple of months, and he could hardly contain his excitement as he opened all of his presents, 90% of which were dinosaur-related. He impressed everyone by spouting out their names ("Dis one Tyrannosaurus Reth! Dis one Tritheratops! Dis one Brachiosaurus! Dis one Ankylosaurus!"). He wanted to take each and every one with him wherever he went:

Just watching the crazy things kids do. Dan's youngest boy carried around pencils and chopsticks in his pants, pretending they were swords. Dan's other kids were always climbing all over Preston and making him throw them around. Cora loves to eat oranges, but one day she tried something new (I have no idea what she is thinking here):

Playing at Boondocks! Dan's oldest turned 10 on December 28th, and we went to Boondocks. The big kids and the boys (and Val) played Laser Tag, while the rest of us hung out and played games. Then we all went bowling, which included such highlights as me unashamedly using the gutter-bumpers and Daxton running down a lane and (of course) falling down and just laying there halfway down the lane until I could walk down and pick him up. Can you believe no one took a picture??? Oh well. Cora LOVED playing air hockey with Grandpa:

Finding out that Corbie doesn't need a cast or a splint for her foot! Yay!!
Playing in the snow! Christmas wasn't white, but the snow soon caught up to us. Daxton's favorite thing to do with snow is....eat it. Here he is snacking on some freshly fallen powder (how adorable is my boy???)

Playing Uno Attack on New Year's Eve. It was too cold to try and do much on New Year's Eve, so we stayed home and watched TV and played Uno Attack! The grown ups played for a little while, but the kids played some form of Uno attack for about three hours:
Fireworks! We put Dax and Cora to bed around 8:30 on New Years Eve because they were pretty worn out from the exciting week they had had. We let Arden stay up with her cousins for a while, and then at 10 p.m. we pretended it was midnight! Preston (brave soul) ventured outside in the 10 degree weather and set off some fireworks while we watched through the windows of the nice toasty house: