Bounty Wrapped in Bows

 (This is Kyrie stuffing her mouth with seaweed (?). Uncle Charles & Aunt Pretty always send us Asian snacks to try at Christmas. Kyrie & I liked this one, but Degen & Darren didn't really care for it.)

(Giant cat at the birth of Christ.)

Christmasmorgasbord

Generally, Christmas is a cook-free day at our house because Momma deserves a holiday, too! The best idea is to snack as we please throughout the day. 

On Christmas Eve, I sent Darren to our Giant Eagle Marketplace, which is regular grocery store surrounded by an enormous fresh food market. There is freshly prepared food of every kind, a fabulous bakery, candy shop, huge meat & fish market, cheese shop with olive, oil & vinegar bars. I don't do my grocery shopping there (I'm a Kroger gal), but when we have coupons I like to go and find special treats for us to share. I knew that Darren, who rarely to never goes food shopping, would enjoy picking out his favorite things.

On Christmas morning, Darren headed to the kitchen to put together a delicious smorgasbord of the meat, cheeses & fruit he got on his trip! It was wonderful! Between Santa gifts and unwrapping presents, we gathered around the table to eat! 

Bath Blizzard

So, my children LOVE the bath! They take at least 2 baths a day, and there have been days where one or both children have been in the bath 5 times. We have a whole technique for baths now in which we drain off half the old, cold and add hot-hot so that we are not wasting so much water. 

Santa left the children a Bath Blizzard this year. I had no real idea what this was, but with fingers crossed we pulled it out and set it to working. In short, it is a bubble bath miracle! You put in a capful of bubble bath and then turn it on and it churns out a seemingly never-ending stream of suds. The kids love it! They took 3 baths on Christmas, and we had to refill the Bath Blizzard for each bath so that they didn't have to go a single moment of their bath without fresh bubbles.

 The blue box is the Bath Blizzard. You can see the stream of suds coming out of it.

Christmas Morning

A fabulous Christmas day that began with a fabulous Christmas morning! We started with "Santa Piles" and stockings! 

Our beautiful tree surrounded by our Christmas bounty, which we'll save for later!

 Kyrie with her Santa Pile. She is holding the mini-van for her dollhouse family. This was the one gift she wanted from Santa.

 Degen with his Santa Pile.

 Degen playing with his new train (I believe that it is James).

 Trying out his hard hat.

 I'm a bad Mommy and don't fix Christmas breakfast (usually) because the kids are too excited to want to sit at the table (and I don't want to do the prep, cooking & clean-up either), so we forage. (I would much rather have Christmas candy for breakfast anyway!) Degen found the Candy Cane Kisses that Santa left and figured out how to open them by himself!

 A special, big girl gift from Santa: a locket!

 Inside there were tiny photos of Kyrie & the family!

 I didn't win a thing with the lottery tickets in my stocking, but Darren won $21! He said that using that Delaware quarter would be lucky!

All Aboard!

Degen has entered the train phase! He has always been interested in things with wheels, but he has quickly become a locomotive enthusiast. It is incredibly adorable to see his face light up when he sees a train or something train-related (especially Thomas the Tank Engine).

This is Degen enjoying the train table at Barnes & Noble.

At Wildlights, we rode the zoo train. It was a rather chilly train ride, but Degen loved it and cried & cried when it was over! There is a small railroad that offers train excursions outside of Columbus, and I know that we will be looking into taking one of these trips soon!

Look at his face! He was so excited!

Evergreen

After we visited Santa, the children looked so cute in their Christmas-y outfits that we had to get a few more photos of them! This wintery scene against an enormous Christmas tree was the perfect backdrop!

Dancing with joy!



The kids wanted to look at the creche, and I caught this cute photo of Kyrie!





Santa Claus Came to Town

Here are more photos of our visit with Santa at Easton Mall. 

LOVE this photo of Santa sharing a secret with Kyrie!

Though Degen did not want to sit on Santa's lap, he gobbled up the chocolate coin that Santa gave him. (I wish he would have sat with Santa because he looked so handsome!)

Wildlights (at the Columbus Zoo)

I love tradition and I love Christmas, so I am always excited when December rolls around. We've got the tree full of memories, the movies, the stories, the crafts and the cookies. Some of the most fun of traditions is passing them on to your children. And sometimes the best traditions come about because you have children. After we had Kyrie, we purchased a zoo pass, which we make good use of from April through October. As the weather turns cool and then cold, we don't think much about going to the zoo except for one special night when we bundle up to go see the Wildlights display. Usually, I check the forecast and try to find a warmer day and in the past we have been pretty lucky. However, this year we have had a particularly cold December. With highs only in the 20s, I was resigning myself to the fact that we'd have to miss the Wildlights this year. Then this week temps climbed to the mid-30s, so we made our plan to go. We bundled the kids in their snowsuits and enjoyed a vision of Christmas in lights! Brrr! It was cold, but lots of fun! 

 We picked Darren up early from work so we would arrive at the zoo ahead of the crowds. Since it is still light outside, we can see some of the animals who are braving the cold, too.

There are lights on almost everything throughout the zoo. It really is an amazing sight!

Our last stop before heading home was Santa! I am very disappointed that Kyrie's photo is fuzzy (can we pretend it's in soft-focus?) BUT I was thrilled that Degen sat on Santa's lap right as we were leaving, and we got such a cute picture of that moment!