Catching Up

After busy Christmas and New Year celebrations, I have a lot of catching up to do. So I'll apologize in advance for the lack of timeliness evident here (two weeks late isn't that bad is it?).

After what turned out to be a snowy, but very relaxed, Christmas eve celebration, we started the Christmas festivities at home with finally discovering what was in our stockings. I say "finally" because the gifts had been in there for a few days. Since we don't pretend that Santa visits our house* we don't actually have to wait until the kids go to bed on Christmas eve to try to cram stuff in the stockings. So the lumps and bumps were very intriguing to at least one of the youngsters in our house.

After stockings, we were off to Sean's parents' home. After consuming more than we should have of our traditional Christmas breakfast, Jack had no more patience for sitting around. It was time to play. The train track pictured below was a sitting-below-the-stockings-because-it-wouldn't-fit-inside gift that we carted along on our travels that day. Whoever (yours truly) thought this track was a good purchase was wrong. Looks cool, yes. Who wouldn't love a train that spirals down curve after curve of wooden track? However, unless it's just glued together, as Jack suggested, it constantly has to be fixed. Add to that an almost-one-year-old that loves to do anything her brothers are doing and it's a recipe for disaster.

Luckily we started opening gifts shortly after the track was set up so we avoided any real big meltdowns. The kids received a joint gift this year. Getting them all to participate in opening it was a challenge. As was getting them all in one picture. I thought children were supposed to be cooperative (okay I really don't think that, but I can dream right?). Represented below in multiple pictures was the Radio Flyer wagon opening event.

The boys celebrated their first Christmases as newborns. It was quite a different experience for Elise. At 11 1/2 months she was able to fully explore every new item put in front of her. She bored quickly of actually opening the gifts, but loved playing with all the new toys whether they were hers or not, much to the dismay of her brothers. Here are a few pictures of baby girl's first Christmas. Please don't be alarmed by the second picture. I assure you that Sean was in complete control and it only looks like Elise is about to fall on her head.

Looks like she had fun, huh?

*Perhaps a topic for another day

Over the next few days I hope to catch up a little on the ol' blog. Stay tuned.