new nothings: gift giving

Friday, January 10, 2014

gift giving

Christmas was mellow this year. Probably because we had one sick kiddo and no extra family in town on the actual holiday. My parents came to visit the day after and we had a lovely time with them, until the one sick kid turned into another sick kid, sick mommy and sick grandma. Then the party was over.

I just sat down today and downloaded Christmas pictures off the camera (I did not recover quickly from whatever junk my child gifted me with...) and I laughed and laughed at some of the expressions I captured.

Have a laugh yourself. (And excuse the blurry-ness. I usually have great success using the action setting and auto-focus on my camera when I know my lack of skills won't keep up with manual settings. But for some reason, things were off this morning.)

We kept the gift giving small this year. Partly because we gave the kids bathroom an update (that's another post) and it wasn't necessarily cheap, but mainly because we see Christmas as a time to celebrate the birth of Jesus, not to spoil our kids rotten with stuff.

So it was group gifts, like new art supplies, and a few special individual items.

Finn loves to cook! If I am in the kitchen, he is next to me on his step stool. So we and the 4 Grands all chipped in and bought this fellow his own kitchen and pots, pans, etc.

Finn is a blankie and pacifier baby. He used his other blankets to shreds, so they got replaced. He opened the box, grabbed the blankets and headed for the nearest lap!

Who knew soup mugs could be so exciting!

Liam likes to call it his "derector" set.

Evie got a special bowl to hold her earrings.

Working hard at getting that ribbon off!

Katie is always excited! I love that. Evie... well.

(And thanks Uncle Jake for the new blu-ray player. :) )

I'm dying. This face.

The man got Ghostbusters.

And Demolition Man.

(And do you like my grey ghetto/redneck moving blanket curtains?)

I told the girls to run their new clothes upstairs and put them away real quick before we watched a movie.... these beds (for their American Girl dolls) from Ikea were on the floor when they came back down. I think Jason and I went deaf from the exclamations of joy!