Scenes from Christmas

Christmas morning this year went much like christmas mornings of the past: with David and I pondering how long we're going to let the kids sleep!  I thought this might be the year Hannah woke us up, but it wasn't.  

They eventually wandered out just before 8.    

Grandpa Davis, Grandma Moon and Papa Tom were all here to share christmas morning with girls.  

Santa brought Riley a train set.  

Santa brought Hannah a bath robe and slippers. The bath robe is a huge hit, Hannah has worn it everyday since receiving it.  

Santa also brought Riley that lion, because she loves lions so much.  

David and I got her Pitch Perfect and a Where's Waldo book.  She sat down to do her Where's Waldo last night and found him 4 different times with relative ease!  

Grandpa Davis gave Riley a Sofia the First Doll.  She came with animals and they talk to each other.  

Here's Grandpa putting together Hannah's Fluttershy doll.  It flies, which amuses both girls.  

After opening, the kids just explored all their new toys.  Both girls enjoyed the train.  

Riley received some finger paints, along with finger paint paper.  So she spent some time finger painting while Hannah put together her new lego's.  

It was a lego Christmas for Hannah.  She received a bunch from her Great Grandma Davis, Aunt Marilyn and Aunt Brandy.  

Santa also brought her the police station.  

Joshua received a couple of ball caps from Santa and some Monsters University slippers.  He was so excited he couldn't get his eyes open.  And neither could Grandma Moon.  

Riley, with a travel art thing.  

Hannah also received Scrabble Flash, which is a great game.  All of us adults enjoyed playing a few round while the kids were occupied with other toys.  

We ended our evening with a fantastic meal cooked entirely by David: prime rib, sauteed green beans and oven crisp potatoes.  He cooked everything perfectly and it was a great meal!  

Scenes from Christmas Eve

Disclaimer: Many of these pictures are blurry, because the kids were moving so much!  

On Christmas Eve we went to my moms house to spend the evening with my mom, Art, Ethan, Bryan and Jaime (Ethan's dad and step mom).  Ethan's only here for a couple weeks, over his christmas break so it was great to be able to open gifts with him and let the kids play together.  

We decided to open gifts first, and let the kids play together while we socialized and snacked after presents.  

As you can see from these two photo's, once the gifts were open, the kids were wide open.  

You can see David holding Joshua in the background.  He slept almost the entire, with the only exception being a 15 or 20 minute snack.  

David got a copy of Jurassic Park on Blu Ray, I got a very nice necklace and earring set.  The kids got all kinds of goodies.  Riley got a band in a box, which I'm sure you can imagine how much she loves.  Hannah received some very nice roller skates.  The whole family ventured out to the skating rink this past Saturday.  I'll talk about that in another post.    

A pretty good family photo.  Only missing 3 Bergers in California.  

Both girls were asleep within minutes of leaving Grandma's house.  

A new adventure in reading

I've been trying to get Hannah to latch on to a good chapter book series for some time now.  It's time for her to make that transition, and stop reading nothing but 10 pages with pictures on every page.  She'll sit down with me and let me read to her, and read some to me as well, with just about any chapter book.  But I still want her to find something she enjoys on her own.  

So we had a talk about it the other day, on our way to the library to see the high school orchestra.  And she brought up the boxcar children.  The boxcar children books have been in her life for almost two years now.  The problem is that they are slightly outdated and a tad sexiest.  

Hannah and I talked about it and she agreed that she would read it, and not ask me to read it to her.  Because I just don't want to read the boxcar children!  Essentially, that was my goal anyways.  

I told Hannah at the end of chapter, I wanted her to draw me a picture about what she had read.  

As you can see, she's already started.  I got two pictures from the first chapter.  She's currently in the middle of the second chapter.